JAPANESE WOODBLOCK PRINT BY KUNISADA (1800s)
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A charming, 19th-century Japanese woodblock print, in rich color, portraying a kabuki player on stage, by popular ukiyo-e artist UTAGAWA KUNISADA (1786-1865). No evident stains, foxing, wormholes, tears, or creases. The yakusha-e (役者絵), or actor-print, genre accounted for about two-thirds of Kunisada's output. Framed and matted under glass. Decorative only.
UTAGAWA KUNISADA I (歌川國貞 [初代] 1786-1865) was the most celebrated actor-print designer of the nineteenth century, and certainly the most prolific. He was born and raised in the Honjô district of Edo, the son of a well-to-do ferry owner. This licensed ferry service provided the family with a measure of financial security that Kunisada was able to access during his early years of printmaking apprenticeship. His family name was Tsunoda (角田) and given name Shôgorô IX (庄五朗) and also Shôzô (庄蔵).
Toyokuni III, also known as Kunisada, was born in the Honjo district of Edo as Kunisada Tsunoda. Kunisada’s family owned a small hereditary ferryboat service. Though his father, an amateur poet, died when Kunisada was a child, the family business provided some financial security. During his childhood, he showed considerable promise in painting and drawing. Due to strong familial ties with literary and theatrical circles, he spent time studying actor portraits.
At age 14, he was admitted to study under Toyokuni, head of the Utagawa school. Kunisada’s ukiyo-e woodblock prints embody the characteristics of the Utagawa school, focusing on traditional subjects such as kabuki, bijin (beautiful women), shunga (erotic prints), and historical prints. Kunisada's first known woodblock print dates to 1807, his first illustrated book to 1808. His career took off from the beginning. Many of his works became overnight successes and he was considered the “star attraction” of the Utagawa school. He signed his works “Kunisada,” sometimes with the studio names of Gototei and Kochoro affixed. In 1844, he adopted the name of his teacher and became Toyokuni III. Kunisada passed away in 1864 in the same neighborhood that he was born. He was 70 years old. Kunisada was a highly popular, and the most active, Japanese ukiyo-e artist of the 19th century. In his time, his reputation surpassed those of his contemporaries Hiroshige and Kuniyoshi.
In 1800-1801, at the age of fourteen or fifteen, he became a pupil of Utagawa Toyokuni I (歌川豊國 1769-1825) and took the artist name "Kunisada" (國貞) soon thereafter.
In 3/1807, Kunisada provided designs in the genre of bijinga (pictures of beautiful women: 美人画) for the series Keisei junitoki (Twelve hours of the courtesans: 傾城十二時). These early bijinga were somewhat immature and suffered in comparison to his designs in this genre even just two years later in 1809. Kunisada's first theatrical print was made in 3/1808, a fan print (uchiwa-e: 團扇絵) portraying Matsumoto Kôshirô V as Nikki Danjo, published by Senzaburô (Dansendô). The following month, Kunisada depicted the Osaka-based actor Nakamura Utaemon III performing at the Nakamura-za in Edo as Yojirô the monkey trainer in the play Oshun Denbei. Soon after, he completed a triptych of beauties and then embarked on illustrations for books (ehon or picture books: 絵本). He would continue to design for ehon throughout his career, providing huge numbers of images for actor-print books and illustrated popular fiction. Even early on, he was prodigiously creative in this genre, as in 1808 when he contributed to no fewer then fourteen ehon.
By the 1810s Kunisada was involved in designing more than fifty series of beauties and actors, as well as a few warrior prints. Yet although much of his reputation rests upon his actor prints (yakusha-e: 役者絵), which represent roughly sixty percent of his total oeuvre, Kunisada was in fact a leading designer of bijinga. He also excelled in the design of surimono (privately issued and distributed high-quality specialty prints: 摺物). He produced large numbers of surimono in the prevailing shikishiban format (色紙判 approx. 205 x 185 mm), such as the one shown below from 11/1823 depicting Ichikawa Danjûrô VII as Iga no Jutarô.
It was during the second decade of the nineteenth century that Kunisada established his teaching studio. By 1814 his students were already designing their own book illustrations for publication. It has been estimated that as many as 15,000 to 20,000 print designs were issued from his studio, as well as thousands of illustrations for woodblock-printed books (ehon). Given that some of these single-sheet prints and ehon were issued in thousands of impressions, the number of actual printed sheets sold by the various publishers over Kunisada's long career must have been astounding. Little wonder that his prints are among the most frequently encountered in collections around the world. Kunisada enjoyed enormous commercial success once he established his studio, whose production of Utagawa-school woodcuts dominated the world of ukiyo-e prints from the 1820s into the beginning of the Meiji era. It seems that without question, he became the most prolific and most commercially successful artist in the history of the ukiyo-e school.
With such an enormous output, it isn't surprising that Kunisada's designs were uneven in quality, which has given rise to questions about his workshop practices and the degree of involvement by his many pupils. Moreover, as a large percentage of his works involved actors, the opaqueness of the kabuki theater to the uninitiated Western observer did little to endear him to the early twentieth-century collectors. Not helping matters were the many compositions that seemed perfunctory in their design or execution, and the large numbers of respectable designs surviving only in late impressions and in poor condition. These circumstances continue to bring about accusations of inferior work cast upon Kunisada's entire oeuvre, which ignores the finest products of the Utagawa studio, especially from his early years, or in surimono production, or from occasional later deluxe editions. Whether his students had a hand in some or most of the more inferior products from Kunisada's studio is difficult to determine, but it is likely to be true, at least to some extent. Nevertheless, the very best of Kunisada's designs, which span his entire career, number among the masterpieces of nineteenth-century ukiyo-e.
In the second half of the 1820s, Kunisada took lessons from the painter Hanabusa Ikkei (英一珪) 1749-1844), a fourth-generation successor to the preeminent painter, calligrapher, and poet Hanabusa Itchô (英一蝶 1652-1724). During the 1830s, actor prints continued to be Kunisada's primary subject while he also produced a great many book illustrations. He also began to add landscape views to serve as backgrounds or settings for actors and beauties. We do not usually associate the landscape print with Kunisada, but he did, on at least one occasion, actually create some excellent stand-alone landscapes for a set of ten untitled prints published by Yamaguchiya Tôbei (Kinkôdô) in the early 1830s. They were probably issued in response to the recent success of Katsushika Hokusai's Fugaku sanjûrokkei (Thirty-six views of Mount Fuji: 富嶽三十六景), also issued in the early 1830s. The compositions were based in part on the Nanga-school artist Kawamura Bumpô's influential Bumpô sansui gafu (Bumpô's album of landscape painting: 文鳳山水画譜), issued posthumously by Bunchôdô in 1824, but Kunisada's prints combined western influences with Kyoto-based literati painting styles. A few of these landscapes are considered masterpieces of the genre.
In 1844, Kunisada took the name Toyokuni (豊國 see signature image at top far right) and claimed that he was the second to hold the "Toyokuni" geimei or art name. Thus, his signature appeared on a few prints as "Kunisada changing to Toyokuni II" (Kunisada aratame nidai Toyokuni: 國貞改二代豊國). However, the artist Utagawa Toyoshige (豊重 1777-1835) had taken the "Toyokuni" name previously and thus today he is known as "Toyokuni II" while Kunisada is designated "Toyokuni III."
Kunisada died on January 12, 1865. His posthumous Buddhist name is Hôkokuin Teishôgasen Shinji and he is buried at the Banshôin Kôun-ji. He left behind a prodigious output, which at its best ranked with the finest prints of the late Edo period.
Ukiyo-e is a genre of Japanese art that flourished from the 17th through 19th centuries. Its artists produced woodblock prints and paintings of such subjects as female beauties; kabuki actors and sumo wrestlers; scenes from history and folk tales; travel scenes and landscapes; flora and fauna; and erotica. Ukiyo-e (浮世絵) translates as 'picture[s] of the floating world'.
In the 20th century there was a revival in Japanese printmaking: the shin-hanga ('new prints') genre capitalized on Western interest in prints of traditional Japanese scenes, and the sōsaku-hanga ('creative prints') movement promoted individualist works designed, carved, and printed by a single artist.
There is wide variation in the condition, rarity, cost, and quality of extant prints. Prints may have stains, foxing, wormholes, tears, creases, or dogmarks, the colors may have faded, or they may have been retouched.
DETAILS
Artist – UNKNOWN
Period/Year – PERIOD
Origin – JAPAN
Styles/Movements – STYLES
Media – WOOD BLOCK PRINT
Support – PAPER
Colors – COLORS
Condition – Excellent vintage condition. May show minor signs of previous ownership and use.
Dimensions – 19 ¼" H × 14 ½" W × ¾" D