Seven Beauties of the Bamboo Grove

Amidst a bamboo grove, seven women of different social status and walks of life—identifiable by their garments and hairstyles—are meticulously portrayed by Watanabe Seitei, a master of Nihonga, or “Japanese-style painting.” Though on the box lid inscribed by Seitei himself the work is referred to simply as “Seven Beauties” (Shichi bijin no zu 七美人之図), the number of women and the setting immediately signal that this painting is a parodic representation of the age-old East Asian painting theme of Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove, based on the legend of seven literati who secluded themselves in a bamboo grove outside the capital in China during the turbulent years of the early Western Jin dynasty (265–317). Over a century before Seitei created this work, the Ukiyo-e painter Katsukawa Shunshō (1726–1792) had created a famous painting Seven Beauties of the Bamboo Grove (Chikurin shichiken zu 竹林七姸図), also showing women of different social classes, which could very well have been a direct inspiration for this work.

The gorgeously garbed woman in the center of the composition is a high-ranked courtesan, or oiran; her magnificent coiffeur has a lacquerlike sheen due to an admixture of glistening animal glue to the black pigment. Directly in front of herare two kamuro, or young girls who serve as apprentices to courtesans of the demimonde. One is seated and holding a fan, the other is seen from behind. On the far right behind the oiran, is a daughter of a samurai family dressed in a bright pink kimono and holding a battledore for a New Year’s game, while to her left her mother sports a subdued brown and grey kimono with a blue obi. To the left of the girls in the center is a demurely but elegantly dressed geisha. On the far left a woman of the merchant class with frazzled hair holds a pair of flower shears in one hand and a stem of peony she has just cut in the other.

This newly discovered masterpiece was one of the stars of a retrospective exhibition of the artist’s paintings at Tokyo University of Fine Arts Museum in 2021, to which The Met lent ten album-leaf paintings on avian themes.