Women Overnight Guests, a Triptych

In Edo a married woman shaved off her eyebrows, and that is how you can pick her out here. She sits on the left inside a green mosquito net with a fan in her hand, talking to the young woman outside who is hanging the net up for the night. The title calls them women overnight guests. Utamaro designed the scene around 1794 to 1795 for the publisher Tsuruya Kiemon as a triptych, three separate sheets that make one picture when they are laid side by side. In the middle a guest stands outside the net tying the sash of her nightclothes, while on the right a maid gathers up a formal black kimono marked with a family crest. Inside, one woman pulls the ornamental pins from her hair, and another, a fold of tissue paper held in her mouth, lifts the edge of the net as if about to step out. This set is one impression from the edition, complete in all three sheets. William and John Spaulding of Boston bought it in Japan in 1913, from Frank Lloyd Wright, and gave it to the museum in 1921.