Utagawa Kunisada III.

Utagawa Kunisada III. ( jap. 歌 川 国 貞 三代 ~ sandai ; * 1848 in Edo ; † October 26, 1920 in Tokyo ), also known as Utagawa Kunimasa IV. ( 歌 川 国 政 四 代 , ~ yondai ) and Hōsai ( 豊 斎 ), was a master of Japanese color, woodcut and painting, who lived and worked in Edo (Tokyo). At the beginning of the 20th century he was the last important master of the Utagawa school to make portraits of kabuki actors in the style of ukiyo-e .

life and work

The actor Ichikawa Danjūrō ​​IX. as sagi musume , 1892

Kunisada III was born. as the son of Kineya Teizan and his wife Takenouchi Sato in the Asakusa district of Edo . He received the youth name Chōtarō. Of his three younger siblings, only one brother named Suwabe survived childhood. Shortly after his birth the family moved into the district to Edoer Nihombashi belonging quarter Fukagawa to where the family opened a butcher's shop. His father worked under the stage name Ōsakaya Eijirō as a naga-uta musician at various Kabuki theaters in Edo. The mother came from a Go-kenin family, which Kunisada III. later in his life to take his mother's family name because of the associated higher social status and use the real name Takenouchi Eikyū ( 竹 内 栄 久 ). Through the mediation of the father of Utagawa Kunimaro and the Kyōgen actor Sakurada Jisuke III. he came to Kunisada I's studio in 1862 at the age of 12 to begin training as a woodcut artist. After his death in January 1865, he was able to move to Kunisada II's studio to continue his education.

Bijin-e , vertical diptych, 1878

From this he received his stage name Kunimasa (IV.), Which was to be understood as a special award, since it was the name under which Kunisada II himself had started his work as a woodcut artist. The first of Kunisada III. Print signed Kunimasa was published in 1867. In the 1880s he trained as a tea master and was praised in this profession in a contemporary newspaper article as artistic as well as as a woodcut master. After the death of Kunisada II in 1880, he tried to get permission from his heir to use the stage name Kunisada. He did not get permission, but used this name from 1889 for a period of three years. In order to avoid further quarrels with the Kunisadas II family, he refrained from using this name and instead took the stage name Hōsai. In an 1898 newspaper interview, he mentioned that he recently moved into a newly built, modest home in the Senzoku neighborhood of Asakusa. He died in this house on October 26, 1920 after a serious illness.

Shini-e for the actor Suketakaya Takasuke IV, 1886

Kunisada III. In the course of his artistic work he designed the templates for a few thousand woodcuts. As with his teachers, his focus was on drafting kabuki prints and actor portraits. In this area he took second place behind Toyohara Kunichika during the Meiji period . He was a leader in the design of oshi-e , prints with which Hagoita clubs were stuck and which were supplemented with pieces of fabric. In addition, he repeatedly designed prints of sumo wrestlers, memorial prints ( Shini-e ) of actors, Bijin-e ("pictures of beautiful women"), Shunga (prints with sexual content) and Kaika-e ("educational pictures", which should inform about the western achievements introduced in Japan). He is also familiar with prints that depict life at the court of Tennō , some landscape pictures from a bird's eye view with references to sights in the area, and isolated prints that report on the First Sino-Japanese War ( senso-e ) or against China Cartoons included. He made numerous templates for kiri-e , cut-out sheets for children, and other toy prints ( omocha-e ) intended for children , including game boards and covers for paper lanterns.

In the years 1897 and 1898 Kunisada III. the order for the design of a series of Genji prints comprising 55 prints along with the title page . This series, entitled "The 54 Chapters of Genji" ( Genji gojūyojō ) was based in design on a series created almost 50 years earlier by his first teacher, Kunisada I., and was the last series of Genji prints to be made by designed by an ukiyo-e artist.

Only a few prints are known after 1900, the Kunisada III. designed. They mostly show portraits of actors and are strongly influenced by the style of Nihonga , "painting in the Japanese style". He drew numerous, similar actor portraits in the first two decades of the 20th century as small-format Senjafuda (votive prints) on behalf of various clubs, which exchanged these and other prints among themselves. He drew prints of this kind until the end of his life, some of which appeared posthumously.

The actor Nakamura Utaemon V., after 1900

In the course of his work as a graphic artist, he occasionally worked as an illustrator of popular stories and novels, as he also occasionally appeared as a draftsman of surimono in Shijō style.

His prints were initially signed with Kunimasa ( 国 政 ). From 1873 to 1888 he used the signature Baidō Kunimasa ( 梅 堂 国 政 ). From 1889 to 1892 he signed Kunisada ( 国 貞 ) or Utagawa Kunisada ( 歌 川 国 貞 ), Baidō Kunisada ( 梅 堂 国 貞 ), Kōchōrō Kunisada ( 香 朝 楼 国 貞 ) and Kōchōrō ( 香 朝 楼 ). After 1892 he changed his name to Hōsai ( 豊 斎 ), the first kanji of that name being the same as the first kanji of the name of the previous chiefs of the Utagawa school, Toyokuni I through IV ( 豊 国 ). Variants of this signature were Kōchōrō Hōsai ( 香 朝 楼 豊 斎 ), Hōsai Kōchōrō ( 豊 斎 香 朝 楼 ), Hōsai Baidō ( 豊 斎 梅 堂 ), Baidō Hōsai ( 梅 堂 豊 斎 ) and Utagawa Hōsai ( 歌 斎 斎 川 豊 ).

His best-known student as a color woodcut artist was his son Kokunimasa ( 小 国 政 ), who gained recognition as an actor portraitist and draftsman for Senso-e in the last decade of the 19th century and the first years of the 20th century . Other students, such as Kunimasa V. ( 国 政 ​​五代 ), Kunimune ( 国 梅 ), Kunitora II. ( 国 虎 二代 , ~ nidai ) and Masanobu ( 政 信 ), on the other hand, were each only a few years in the last decades of the 19th century active as a color woodcut artist. His student Kunikazu ( 国 一 ) became, after he had designed some colored woodblock prints in the late ukiyo-e style, under the name Otake etsudō ( 尾 竹 越 堂 ) to an important representative of the Nihonga .

annotation

1. ↑ In some sources it is stated that he would also have signed Toyokuni IV or Toyokuni V. Evidence through a datable print, stylistically Kunisada III. can be assigned, cannot be provided for this assertion.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ A newspaper note from 1892 shows that he had received the order from the Ichimura Theater to design the advertising posters that were to advertise the performances for the coming theater season. Amy Reigle Newland: In the shadow of another. Introducing the 'Meiji no Edokko ' Baidō Hōsai. In: Andon 89 , p. 13.
2. ↑ Amy Reigle Newland: In the shadow of another. Introducing the 'Meiji no Edokko' Baidō Hōsai. In: Andon 89 , p. 21.
3. ↑ Amy Reigle Newland: In the shadow of another. Introducing the 'Meiji no Edokko' Baidō Hōsai. In: Andon 89 , p. 11 and p. 14.
4. ↑ ^{a b c d} Amy Reigle Newland: In the shadow of another. Introducing the 'Meiji no Edokko' Baidō Hōsai. In: Andon 89 , p. 14.
5. ^ ^{A b} Amy Reigle Newland: In the shadow of another. Introducing the 'Meiji no Edokko' Baidō Hōsai. In: Andon 89 , p. 11.
6. ↑ Amy Reigle Newland: In the shadow of another. Introducing the 'Meiji no Edokko' Baidō Hōsai. In: Andon 89 , p. 12.
7. ↑ Amy Reigle Newland: In the shadow of another. Introducing the 'Meiji no Edokko' Baidō Hōsai. In: Andon 89 , p. 26.
8. ↑ Amy Reigle Newland: In the shadow of another. Introducing the 'Meiji no Edokko' Baidō Hōsai. In: Andon 89 , p. 13.
9. ^ ^{A b} Amy Reigle Newland: In the shadow of another. Introducing the 'Meiji no Edokko' Baidō Hōsai. In: Andon 89 , p. 6.
10. ↑ Andreas Marks: Genji's World in Japanese Woodblock Prints. Hotei Publishing, Leiden 2012, p. 256.
11. ↑ Amy Reigle Newland: In the shadow of another. Introducing the 'Meiji no Edokko' Baidō Hōsai. In: Andon 89 , p. 19 f
12. ↑ The database of the National Institute of Japanese Literature lists 27 titles that were created with his participation, Union Catalog of Early Japanese Books. (Japanese)
13. ↑ One of Kunisada III. designed surimono in the Maruyama Shijō style is in the collection of the British Museum . See the British Museum's online catalog , accessed March 1, 2014. (English)
14. ↑ Amy Reigle Newland: In the shadow of another. Introducing the 'Meiji no Edokko' Baidō Hōsai. In: Andon 89 , p. 25 f.
15. ↑ Andreas Marks: Japanese Woodblock Prints. Artists, Publishers, and Masterworks 1680-1900. Tuttle, Tokyo et al. 2010, ISBN 978-4-8053-1055-7 , p. 176 f. (English)
16. ↑ " ukiyo-e-shi sōran " (浮世 絵 師 総 覧) , "Complete bibliography of ukiyoe artists" (Japanese)
17. ↑ Harumi Setouchi: Beauty in Disarray. Tuttle, Tokyo et al. 1993, ISBN 978-0-8048-1866-7 , p. 117. (English)

literature

• Amy Reigle Newland: In the shadow of another. Introducing the 'Meiji no Edokko' Baidō Hōsai. In: Andon 89 , Society for Japanese Arts, December 2010, pp. 5-26. (English)
• Amy Reigle Newland (Ed.): The Hotei Encyclopedia of Japanese Woodblock Prints. 2 volumes. Hotei, Amsterdam 2003, ISBN 90-74822-65-7 , p. 503. (English)

Web links

Commons : Utagawa Kunisada III.  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

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.