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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. The term ukiyo-e translates as 'picture[s] of the floating world'.
Utagawa Kunisada, also known as Utagawa Toyokuni III, was a Japanese ukiyo-e artist. He is considered the most popular, prolific and commercially successful designer of ukiyo-e woodblock prints in 19th-century Japan. In his own time, his reputation far exceeded that of his contemporaries, Hokusai, Hiroshige and Kuniyoshi.
Suzuki Harunobu was a Japanese designer of woodblock print art in the ukiyo-e style. He was an innovator, the first to produce full-color prints in 1765, rendering obsolete the former modes of two- and three-color prints. Harunobu used many special techniques, and depicted a wide variety of subjects, from classical poems to contemporary beauties. Like many artists of his day, Harunobu also produced a number of shunga, or erotic images. During his lifetime and shortly afterwards, many artists imitated his style. A few, such as Harushige, even boasted of their ability to forge the work of the great master. Much about Harunobu's life is unknown.
Torii Kiyonaga was a Japanese ukiyo-e artist of the Torii school. Originally Sekiguchi Shinsuke, the son of an Edo bookseller, from Motozaimokuchō Itchōme in Edo, he took on Torii Kiyonaga as an art name. Although not biologically related to the Torii family, he became head of the group after the death of his adoptive father and teacher Torii Kiyomitsu.
Konishi Hirosada was the most prolific Osaka-based designer of ukiyo-e woodblock prints during the late Edo period. Like most producers of kamigata-e (上方絵)—prints originating in the Osaka and Kyoto regions—he specialized in yakusha-e actor prints. Hirosada is particularly known for his diptychs and triptychs, and for his many ōkubi-e portraits of the leading actors on the Osaka kabuki stage during his day.
Okumura Masanobu was a Japanese print designer, book publisher, and painter. He also illustrated novelettes and in his early years wrote some fiction. At first his work adhered to the Torii school, but later drifted beyond that. He is a figure in the formative era of ukiyo-e doing early works on actors and bijin-ga.
Shunshō Katsukawa was a Japanese painter and printmaker in the ukiyo-e style, and the leading artist of the Katsukawa school. Shunshō studied under Miyagawa Shunsui, son and student of Miyagawa Chōshun, both equally famous and talented ukiyo-e artists. Shunshō is best known for introducing a new form of yakusha-e, prints depicting Kabuki actors. However, his bijin-ga paintings, while less famous, are said by some scholars to be "the best in the second half of the [18th] century".
Yakusha-e (役者絵), often referred to as "actor prints" in English, are Japanese woodblock prints or, rarely, paintings, of kabuki actors, particularly those done in the ukiyo-e style popular through the Edo period (1603–1867) and into the beginnings of the 20th century. Most strictly, the term yakusha-e refers solely to portraits of individual artists. However, prints of kabuki scenes and of other elements of the world of the theater are very closely related, and were more often than not produced and sold alongside portraits.
The Torii school was a school of ukiyo-e painting and printing founded in Edo. The primary producers of kabuki theater signboards and other promotional materials, the Torii were among those whose work led to the development of ukiyo-e. Their style was one of the primary influences in the ukiyo-e depiction of actors and kabuki scenes for much of the 18th century. Still today, kabuki signboards are sometimes painted by members of the Torii family.
Torii Kiyonobu I was a Japanese painter and printmaker in the ukiyo-e style, who is renowned for his work on kabuki signboards and related materials. Along with his father Torii Kiyomoto, he is said to have been one of the founders of the Torii school of painting.
Torii Kiyomasu was a Japanese painter and printmaker of the Torii school, in the genre of ukiyo-e. Like the other Torii artists, his primary focus was on Kabuki billboards, advertisements, actor prints, and other related material. Many scholars believe Kiyomasu to have been the younger brother or son of Torii Kiyonobu I, one of the founders of the school, or to have been an alternate art-name (gō) for the same man.
Torii Kiyomitsu was a painter and printmaker of the Torii school of Japanese ukiyo-e art; the son of Torii Kiyonobu II or Torii Kiyomasu II, he was the third head of the school, and was originally called Kamejirō before taking the gō Kiyomitsu. Dividing his work between actor prints and bijinga, he primarily used the benizuri-e technique prolific at the time, which involved using one or two colors of ink on the woodblocks rather than hand-coloring; full-color prints would be introduced later in Kiyomitsu's career, in 1765.
Kaigetsudō Ando, also known as Ando Yasunori, was a Japanese painter and the founder of the Kaigetsudō school of ukiyo-e art. Though influential and prolific, it is probable that many of the works attributed to him were painted by his disciples. He is a rarity among major ukiyo-e artists in that he made only paintings and never woodblock prints.
Kamigata (上方) was the colloquial term for a region today called Kansai in Japan. This large area encompasses the cities of Kyoto, Osaka, and Kobe. The term was also sometimes used to refer only to Kyoto city. The term is used particularly when discussing elements of Edo period urban culture such as ukiyo-e and kabuki, and when making a comparison to the urban culture of the Edo/Tokyo region. The term was no longer used as name for the Kansai provinces when Emperor Meiji moved to Edo in 1868. An account described Kamigata suji as one of the two regions that emerged from the division of Japan for the purpose of taxation with the other being Kwanto-suji.
Utagawa Kunimasu was a designer of ukiyo-e woodblock prints in Osaka who was active during the late Edo period. He was a leading producer of kamigata-e, prints from the Osaka and Kyoto areas. He is also known as Sadamasu [貞升], the artist name he used prior to Kunimasu.
Utagawa Toyoharu was a Japanese artist in the ukiyo-e genre, known as the founder of the Utagawa school and for his uki-e pictures that incorporated Western-style geometrical perspective to create a sense of depth.
Actor Arashi Rikan II as Osome is an ukiyo-e woodblock print by Osaka print artist Ryūsai Shigeharu. It depicts late Edo period kabuki actor, Arashi Rikan II as the lead female character in a scene from a popular play of the period. The print belongs to the permanent collection of the Prince Takamado Gallery of Japanese Art in the Royal Ontario Museum, Canada.
Nishimura Shigenaga was a Japanese ukiyo-e artist.
Torii Kiyohiro was a Japanese artist of the Torii school of ukiyo-e.
Torii Kiyotsune was a Japanese artist of the Torii school of ukiyo-e art.
References
- Hickman, Money (1993). Enduring Alliance: The Torii Line of Ukiyo-e Artists and Their Work for the Kabuki Theatre. Fenway Court, 1992. Boston: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.
- Lane, Richard. (1978). Images from the Floating World, The Japanese Print. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780192114471; OCLC 5246796
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