Utagawa Kunisada

This article is about the artist Utagawa Kunisada (1786–1865). For his pupil of the same name see Utagawa Kunisada II. (1823-1880).

Portrait of Kunisada at the age of 79, shortly before his death (color woodcut by Kunisada II , dated 12th month 1864).

Utagawa Kunisada ( Japanese 歌 川 国 貞 ; * 1786 in Honjo, Edo [today Sumida , Tokyo ], † January 12, 1865 in Edo), also known as Utagawa Toyokuni III. ( 歌 川 豊 国 三代 ), was the most popular, important and financially successful draftsman of Japanese woodblock prints in his time . In terms of the reputation of his contemporaries, he ranked above other well-known woodcut artists such as Utagawa Hiroshige and Utagawa Kuniyoshi .

Life

Little is known about Kunisada's life. He was born in 1786 as Sumida Shōgorō ( 角 田 庄 五 朗 ), also called Sumida Shōzō ( 角 田 庄 蔵 ), in Honjo ( 本 所 ), an eastern district of Edo . His family owned a small, licensed and hereditary ferry company, whose income provided him with a certain basic security throughout his life. Growing up as a half-orphan (his father died the year after his birth), he seems to have developed a talent for painting and drawing at an early age. Toyokuni I , the head of the Utagawa School and at the time the leading draftsman of kabuki and actor portrait woodcuts, impressed his early sketches , so that he accepted him as an apprentice in the workshop in 1800 or shortly afterwards. As is usual in Japanese master-apprentice relationships, his teacher gave him an official stage name with a part of the name of the master - in this case Kuni sada, derived from the second part of the name Toyo kuni .

Kunisada's first known color woodcut dates from 1807, but initially seems to have been an exception, as other large-format prints by him did not appear until 1809/10. However, he was already producing book illustrations from 1808, and his popularity grew rapidly. In 1809 he was named in contemporary sources as the "main attraction" of the Utagawa School and in 1810/11 he was regarded as at least equal to his teacher Toyokuni I in the field of book illustration.

Kunisada's first actor portraits with unequivocal attribution were published in 1809, but the first such works may have appeared as early as 1808. Also in 1809 his first Bijin series (pictures of beautiful women) and a series of pentaptychs with cityscapes of Edo appeared . In 1813, a contemporary list of Edo's most important ukiyo-e artists ranked him second behind Toyokuni I.

Utagawa Kunisada died on the 15th day of the 12th month of Genji 1 (according to the western calendar on January 12th, 1865) in the same district in which he was born.

Signatures

At the beginning of his career, Kunisada signed with various nicknames such as Gepparō, Kinraisha and Ichiyūsai. From 1810 at the latest, however, he also used the nickname Gototei, which can be found on almost all kabuki prints until 1842.

Around 1825 he studied the traditional painting style Hanabusa Itchōs with his successor Hanabusa Ikkei and from then on used the surname Kōchōrō on a lot of prints that cannot be assigned to the Kabuki area. But also Kōchō, Kōchōshi, Tōjuen and Hanabusa Ittai were occasionally used as epithets.

In 1844 Kunisada took the name of his master and for a while signed his prints with "Kunisada who changed his name to Toyokuni II". He ignored the fact that after Toyokuni's death in 1825, his pupil and son-in-law Toyoshige had become the legitimate head of the Utagawa School and had already been called Toyokuni II by his own death in 1835. In art literature today, Kunisada is generally referred to as Toyokuni III. designated.

From 1844/45 onwards, Kunisada signed all of his prints only with “Toyokuni”, sometimes with different nicknames such as B. Kōchōrō and Ichiyōsai. On a few prints there are other nicknames such as Fuchoan, Hokubaiko, Yanagishima, Eishū, Kōchō, Ichiyō and Hanabusa Ittai.

plant

From practically from the first day he worked until his death, Kunisada was a "trendsetter" in the art of Japanese woodblock prints. In keeping with the current public taste, he either developed his style further or changed it radically. All contemporary Japanese artists were guided by his stylistic guidelines.

Kunisada's productivity was extremely high. His life's work can be estimated at around 20,000 designs for woodblock prints, which would correspond to around 30,000 to 32,000 individual sheets (the Utagawa Kunisada Project recorded around 17,000 designs with a total of around 26,000 individual sheets at the end of 2010). This does not include the designs for several hundred illustrated books.

According to the traditions of the Utagawa school, Kunisada's main subject was the genre of kabuki illustrations and actor portraits; around 60% of his prints can be assigned to this area. Bijin prints (pictures of beautiful women) make up another 15% of his total work , the total number of which is far higher than that of any other artist of his time. From 1820 to 1860 he also dominated the market for portraits of sumo wrestlers, and from 1835 to 1860 he had a near monopoly on illustrations for the historical novel Genji Monogatari ; It was not until around 1850 that other artists produced similar prints. The number of his surimono (elaborately printed greeting and greeting cards) is also noteworthy: Although he designed these almost exclusively before 1844, hardly any other artist is known.

Landscape and Musha-e prints (depictions of warriors) by Kunisada, on the other hand, are relatively rare, only about 100 of each are known. Relatively unknown are also his paintings, which he made on a private basis and which can withstand comparisons with other masters of ukiyo-e painting. His work as a book illustrator is still largely unexplored, although he was apparently no less productive in this area than in the color woodblock print. This also includes his numerous Shunga pictures (erotic to clearly sexual illustrations), which appeared in book form and are only signed on one of the inside pages with the pseudonym "Matahei".

Cooperations

Kunisada worked with his contemporaries Utagawa Hiroshige and Utagawa Kuniyoshi on three larger series and a few smaller projects in the mid-1840s . There is much to suggest that this cooperation had the main political motive to set a common signal against the tightened censorship regulations of the Tempō reforms.

In the first half of the 1850s there was another collaboration with Hiroshige on some series. From the mid-1850s onwards, more and more series appeared in which Kunisada's students signed for individual areas of the prints or even complete sheets. Apparently this was connected with the intention of promoting the sale of their own work.

reception

At the end of the Edo period , Utagawa Hiroshige, Utagawa Kuniyoshi and Utagawa Kunisada were the three most well-known representatives of the Japanese color woodblock print in Edo. However, Kunisada and Kuniyoshi as typical representatives of the Utagawa school were largely held responsible for the decline of the Japanese woodblock print by the first European and American collectors at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. Her works were therefore initially dismissed as inferior and decadent.

Utagawa Hiroshige, who had been exempted from the artistic “decadence” of the Utagawa School due to the incorrectly assigned family name “Andō”, was already an important artist in collectors' circles at the end of the 19th century. Kuniyoshi's work began to be re-evaluated in the 1960s, and at least his musha-e prints received due respect.

From Kunisada, only a few actor portraits and Bijin prints from the beginning of his career and a series with large-format actors' heads from the end were recognized as artistically valuable. It was only with the publication of Jan van Doesburg's overview of Kunisada's artistic development in 1990 and Sebastian Izzard's extensive presentation of his work in 1993 that the view began that Kunisada should also be counted among the greats of Japanese woodblock prints.

literature

• Jan van Doesburg: What about Kunisada? Huys den Esch, Dodewaard 1990, ISBN 90-800527-1-X .
• Sebastian Izzard: Kunisada's World. Japan Society, New York NY 1993, ISBN 0-913304-37-9 .
• Ellis Tinios: Mirror of the Stage. The Actor Prints of Kunisada. University Gallery, Leeds 1996, ISBN 1-87433-112-X .

Web links

Commons : Utagawa Kunisada  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Utagawa Kunisada in the catalog of the German National Library
• Works by Utagawa Kunisada at Zeno.org .
• The Utagawa Kunisada Project - Overview of Kunisada's complete oeuvre with thousands of pictures, a list of series titles, a list of the actors portrayed by him and illustrated Kabuki pieces as well as detailed information about his signatures.

Japanese name: As is common in Japan, the family name comes before the first name in this article . Thus Utagawa is the family name, Kunisada the first name.