A Beauty (early 1800s): Art, History and Details

A Beauty (early 1800s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Gion Seitoku (Japanese, active late 1700s–early 1800s).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

A Kyoto-based ukiyo-e painter, Gion Seitoku specialized in portraying women from Gion and Shimabara, licensed brothel districts in that city. He was known for detailing faces with subtle modeling to heighten a sense of realism. During the 1700s and 1800s, wearing iridescent, greenish lip gloss made from safflower was in vogue. In addition, Japanese women almost universally practiced the custom of artificially blackening their teeth with a stain.

Object facts

• Title: A Beauty
• Date: early 1800s
• Creator attribution: Gion Seitoku (Japanese, active late 1700s–early 1800s)
• Culture: Japan, Edo period (1615–1868)
• Type: Painting
• Technique: hanging scroll; ink and color on paper
• Dimensions: Overall: 139.7 x 55.8 cm (55 x 21 15/16 in.); Painting only: 56.3 x 43.1 cm (22 3/16 x 16 15/16 in.)
• Collection: ASIAN - Hanging scroll
• Department: Japanese Art
• Accession number: 1985.271

A detail from the museum

The person's lipstick is made from safflower.

Collection credit

The Kelvin Smith Collection, given by Mrs. Kelvin Smith

Further reading listed by the museum

• Kyōto Teishitsu Hakubutsukan 京都帝室博物館. Ukiyo-E Shūei: Tokubetsu Tenran 浮世繪聚英. Kyoto: Benridō, 1923.
• Jenkins, Donald. “Paintings of the Floating World.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art, vol. 75, no.7 (September 1988): 244–260, 262–278, 238.
• “Checklist of the Kelvin Smith Bequest.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art, vol. 75, no. 7 (September 1988): 292–295.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.