Kitagawa Utamaro

One can also see the influence of the Edo-period Japanese woodblock artist Kitagawa Utamaro, best known for his elegant, intimate portraits of beautiful women, or bijin-ga.

Strolling courtesans, Mount Fuji and a popular actor crossing his eyes appear in woodblock prints by leading 18th- and 19th-century artists — Kitagawa Utamaro, Toshusai Sharaku and Katsushika Hokusai.

Kitagawa Utamaro depicted women so well, it was said, because he knew them so well.

“Inventing Utamaro” explores three large paintings by a renowned 18th-century master of Japanese art, Kitagawa Utamaro, and places them in the context of the same Japanisme that inspired Wilde, and Charles Lang Freer, who bought one of Utamaro’s masterpieces and brought it the United States.

Jakuchu’s fine depictions of peacocks, phoenixes, flowers and roosters make for a pleasant contrast with the more provocative images of geisha by Kitagawa Utamaro and Katsushika Hokusai, including the latter’s striking “A Summer Morning,” showing a woman, possibly a courtesan, admiring her image in a hand-held mirror; in the background, a man’s kimono is visible.