Author
Ukiyo-e
Three Beauties of the Present Day
Utamaro's Three Beauties of the Present Day — three famous women of Edo, almost identical in face: a print where ideal beauty matters more than likeness.
Its value lies in refined convention: Utamaro perfected bijin-ga, turning the face into an ideal sign of Edo beauty.
Highlights
Surprising facts & legends
Short but striking stories around the work — the things that make it come alive.
Interesting facts
The story around the work
Interesting facts & legends
- The three women are real Edo celebrities; they can be identified only by the crests on their kimonos.
- The faces are almost identical: for Utamaro the ideal of beauty matters more than likeness.
- The background shimmers with mica powder — a costly device of luxury prints.
- Utamaro is the great master of 'bijin-ga', prints of beautiful women.
- Through Japonisme such sheets influenced Degas, Toulouse-Lautrec and Van Gogh.
Estimated value
What it is worth today
Three Beauties is an Utamaro woodblock print; impressions are held in museums and collections, and rare examples fetch hundreds of thousands of dollars at auction.
More details Open the extended reading, official sources, and visual context around the work
Historical context
Three Beauties of the Present Day in its era
Utamaro made the print around 1793. It is a 'bijin-ga' — a picture of beauties: three real Edo celebrities (two teahouse girls and a geisha) arranged in a triangle of faces on a shimmering mica ground.
Path to recognition
How the work became widely known
The faces are almost the same — the ideal matters more than individuality, and the women can only be told apart by the crests on their kimonos. The fine line and mica-dust ground made Utamaro the master of the female print.
Value
Why the work matters today
Its value lies in refined convention: Utamaro perfected bijin-ga, turning the face into an ideal sign of Edo beauty.
Connections and legacy
How to read the work more broadly
Utamaro's prints, like Hokusai's and Hiroshige's, influenced Degas, Toulouse-Lautrec and all of European Art Nouveau through the wave of Japonisme.
Official sources
Where to verify the institutional context
- Official institution page The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Visual context
Related images and nearby entry points
What to look at
Three entry points into the work
Even a very famous artwork opens more fully when the viewer knows where to look for tension, meaning, and compositional focus.
- Compare the three faces — the differences are barely there.
- Find the crests on the kimonos — how the women were told apart.
- Note the shimmering mica ground.
Continue the exhibition
A few more works nearby by era, energy, or visual logic
This makes it easier to move through art not as a list of names, but as a connected system of images, themes, and historical gestures.
