昭和5年（1930）の早春、ローマで開かれる日本美術展へ赴く友人たちを神戸で見送るため、清方は東海・畿内を旅しました。かねてからの憧れの地であった京都にも滞在し、京都生まれの弟子、山川秀峰の案内で家族とともに祇園を訪れました。そこで知り合った、芸子の姉、舞子の妹の姉妹をモデルにして描いた写生が残っています。
本作は、舞妓特有の髪型である割れしのぶやだらりの帯がよくわかる構図になっています。清方は、描き慣れた江戸・東京の女性と異なる舞妓の姿を細部まで丹念に描き、自身の目で見た鮮やかな印象を留めるように表しました。

Maiko (Apprentice Geisha) (1930)
color on silk; hanging scroll
39.8 x 50.3 cm
(First exhibited at the 2nd Shōtoku Taishi Commemorative Exhibition)

In the early spring of 1930, Kiyokata toured the Tokai area and area around Kyoto on his way to Kobe to see off friends traveling to Rome to attend an exhibition of Japanese art. He also stayed in Kyoto, a place he had longed to visit for some time, where Yamakawa Shūhō, Kiyokata’s pupil and a native of Kyoto, took him and his family on a guided tour of the Gion district. There, he became acquainted with two sisters, the older one a geiko and the younger one a maiko (geisha and apprentice geisha) and made some sketches of them.
In this work, the composition focuses on the wareshinobu hairstyle and the darari-obi sash that are characteristic of an apprentice geisha. Kiyokata has painstakingly drawn the maiko—a figure unlike the women of Edo and Tokyo he was accustomed to drawing—to try to capture the fresh impression as seen through his own eyes.