Woman Applying Makeup

Goyō’s woodblock printed images of women represent a bridge—of both techniques and aesthetics—between ukiyo-e prints of the Edo period (1615–1868) and shin hanga of the modern era. All of his female subjects are known to be geishas or waitresses in high-class restaurants or tea houses, and hence professional beauties. Goyō attempted to combine what he considered the best elements of three ukiyo-e masters he most admired: Suzuki Harunobu (1724–1770), for his evocative use of color; Torii Kiyonaga (1752–1815), for his superlative sense of composition; and Kitagawa Utamaro (1754–1806), for the quality of his design and his use of silvery mica grounds. Moreover, women at their toilette was a quintessential Utamaro theme and evokes the works of that artist.

In the ukiyo-e tradition of which he was a dedicated student. Goyō has concentrated the skills of the printer on the hair and the tie-dyed textile, as well as on the gilt back of the hand-mirror. The skilled use of blind printing on the floral collar of her underrobe and on the cover of her pocket mirror is familiar from the prints of Harunobu and his successors. From his studies of European painting, Goyō also introduced a sense of realism to his images that is not found in prints of earlier eras. Woman Applying Makeup, in both size and execution, is recognized as the grandest of the artist’s prints. A three-dimensionality is achieved with the use of a soft-edged, pink block, which is applied beneath the eyes, around the lips and nostrils, at the throat and on her chest, adding the effect of shadow.

Goyō was a fastidious draftsman, who is known to have carefully worked out his designs in multiple preparatory drawings in pencil. Wishing to have complete control over the production of the prints, he published the works himself, relying on the master block-cutter Takano Shichinosuke and the printer Somekawa Kanzō. The wisps of hair hanging down to frame the face—which exaggerates the care with which her hair has been dressed and is a masterpiece of the block–carver’s art.

The blocks and surviving print stocks of Goyo's small output were destroyed in the 1923 Great Tokyo earthquake and are very rare. Woman Applying Makeup is the first of only seven beauty prints published during Goyō’s lifetime; his family posthumously published three additional beauty prints based on proof blocks carved during the artist’s lifetime.