Focus on Three Beauties of the Present Day and analyze the Description and analysis.
Three Beauties of the Present Day is considered one of Utamaro's representative early works.  It depicts the profiles of three celebrity beauties of 1790s Edo (modern Tokyo).  Utamaro's subjects were not courtesans, as was expected in ukiyo-e, but young women known around Edo for their beauty.  These three were frequent subjects of Utamaro's art, and often appeared together.  Each is identified with an associated family crest.In the centre poses Tomimoto Toyohina, a famed geisha of the Tamamuraya house in the Yoshiwara pleasure district.  She was dubbed "Tomimoto" having made her name playing Tomimoto-bushi music on the shamisen.  Like the other two models, she has her hair up in the fashionable Shimada style that was popular at the time.  Contrasted with the homelier teahouse-girl garments of the other two models, she is dressed in the showier geisha style.  The Tomimoto crest's Japanese primrose design adorns the sleeve of her kimono.  Toyohina's birthdate is unknown.To the right Naniwaya Kita, also known as "O-Kita", well-known daughter of the owner of a teahouse in Asakusa near the temple Sensō-ji.  She is said to have been fifteen in the portrait, in which she wears a patterned black kimono and holds an uchiwa hand fan printed with her family emblem, a paulownia crest.At left is Takashima Hisa, also called "O-Hisa", from Yagenbori in Ryōgoku.  She was the eldest daughter of Takashima Chōbei, the owner of a roadside teahouse at his home called Senbeiya in which Hisa worked attracting customers.  Tradition places her age at sixteen when the portrait was made, and there is a subtly discernible difference in maturity in the faces of the two teahouse girls.  Hisa holds a hand towel over her left shoulder and an identifying three-leaved daimyo oak crest decorates her kimono.Crests of the three beauties
		
			
			
		
		
			
			
		
		
			
			
		
Rather than attempting to capture a realistic portrayal of the three, Utamaro idealizes their likenesses.  To many viewers, the faces in this and other portraits of the time seem little individuated, or perhaps not at all. Others emphasize the subtle differences that distinguish the three in the shapes of the mouths, noses, and eyes:  Kita has plump cheeks and an innocent expression; her eyes are almond-shaped, and the bridge of her nose high;  Hisa has a stiffer, proud expression, and the bridge of Hisa's nose is lower and her eyes rounder than Kita's;  Toyohina's features fall in between, and she has an air of being older and more intellectual.The print is a vertical ōban of 37.9 × 24.9 centimetres (14.9 × 9.8 in), and is a nishiki-e—a full-colour ukiyo-e print made from multiple woodblocks, one for each colour; the inked blocks are pressed on Japanese handmade paper.  To produce a glittering effect the background is dusted with muscovite, a variety of mica.  The image falls under the genres of bijin-ga ("portraits of beauties") and ōkubi-e ("big-headed pictures"), the latter a genre Utamaro pioneered and was strongly associated with.The composition of the three figures is triangular, a traditional arrangement Tadashi Kobayashi compares to The Three Vinegar Tasters, in which Confucius, Gautama Buddha, and Laozi  symbolize the unity of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism; similarly, Kobayashi says, Utamaro demonstrates the unity of the three competing celebrity beauties in the print.
Portraits of the three Kansei beauties by Utamaro
Sensō-ji geisha Buddhism Laozi Confucianism Gautama Buddha courtesans bijin-ga Utamaro paulownia oak Edo family crest Japanese handmade paper shamisen Asakusa mica ōban ōkubi-e Shimada Taoism nishiki-e Confucius Yoshiwara muscovite The Three Vinegar Tasters Kansei ukiyo-e Japanese primrose teahouse Tomimoto-bushi hand fan Ryōgoku Ryō Yagenbori daimyo oak