Musical Party

Five fashionable prostitute and a male figure playing the shamisen gather before a folding screen painted with an autumnal scene of a red sun and white chrysanthemums. One of the elegant prostitutes also plays a shamisen, while two others read books. Red and white Chinese characters on the garment of the prostitute at right read “flower” and “cherry blossoms, ” age-old symbols of the ephemerality of beauty and youth. Two small red seals on the far right of the folding screen within the painting identify the artist as the early ukiyo-e master Hishikawa Moronobu.