Torii Kiyonaga

It is suspected that prior to entering the Torii school he may have trained under Isoda Koryūsai, Suzuki Harunobu, and Kitao Shigemasa, as much of Kiyonaga's work shows influence from these other ukiyo-e masters.

Like most ukiyo-e artists, however, he also produced a number of prints and paintings depicting Kabuki actors and related subjects, many of them promotional materials for the theaters.

Kiyonaga produced a great many bijin-ga prints in the 1780s, and this is generally regarded as his high point; this is particularly true because he nearly stopped doing art entirely in the early 1790s.

Meanwhile, contemporary artists of the samurai class, who would be expected to have a better innate sense of the aesthetics and details of aristocratic culture, produced images quite arguably inferior to those of Kiyonaga.

Though a difference of personal styles accounts for this primarily, it also comes in part from Kiyonaga's use of larger sheets of paper (ōban, rather than chūban or hosoban[3]).

Due to the large size of his prints many of his works with beautiful women also feature a scenic background illustrated with the Western concept of perspective.