Courtesan, Kamuro, and Customer

DescriptionOne of a group of eleven fan prints printed in ink plus one or two colors, with hand-written notes dateable to 1822, bound together as an album. The prints and handwritten notes are very similar to the contents of a two-volume album of 111 ink-only fan prints now in the Kaga Bunko collection of the Tokyo Metropolitan Central Library, entitled Dansen-e sumizuriban kagami, formerly the property of a fan dealer in Horie-machi, most likely Ibaya Jinzaemon (who may be related to the ukiyo-e publisher Ibaya Senzaburô). The prints seem to have been made from old blocks for the records of the fan store, shortly before 1822 when the hand-written comments were added. At some point, these eleven color prints were separated from the remaining ink-only prints and somehow came into the Spaulding collection.

This print is the only one in the album that is not a theatrical scene, but it is possibly that it was originally an actor print and was revamped as a "real" scene of the pleasure quarters, with the actors' identifying crests removed.

Signed Unsigned
無款