Background
He was born circa 1753. Like most of the Ukiyo-e artists, Kitagawa Utamaro was a native of Edo (modern Tokyo).
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book
Chorus of Birds
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The Passionate Art of Kitagawa Utamaro (2 Volume Set)
(Kitagawa Utamaro (?1754-1806) is the pivotal artist of th...)
Kitagawa Utamaro (?1754-1806) is the pivotal artist of the Ukiyo-e school. His sensuous and sharp-witted portrayal of women in all walks of life both celebrate and comment on those of the "Floating World". Discovered early in his career, Utamaro was soon collaborating with the leading writers of the 1790s. The culmination was a sequence of deluxe poetry anthologies, which he illustrated in colour woodblock with figure and nature subjects and erotic scenes. In the 1790s Utamaro transformed the style of Ukiyo-e art with his prolific ouput of print series: often portraits in the new bust and half-length formats. High-ranked courtesans, lovers from literature and ordinary domestic scenes - all these themes are explored. Boastful of his talents, Utamaro finally came into collision with the feudal authorities, suffering house arrest that accelerated his artistic decline and led to his death. This text is published to accompany a British Museum exhibition in two parts, organized with the Chiba City Museum, Japan. The work includes rare surviving hanging scroll paintings, wood-block prints in complete series and all of Utamaro's illustrated books. The introductory essays and catalogue appear both in English and Japanese.
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Utamaro, (Masterworks of Ukiyo-e)
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The Complete Woodblock Prints of Kitagawa Utamaro: A Descriptive Catalogue
(Kitagawa Utamaro was the leading light of the popular Uki...)
Kitagawa Utamaro was the leading light of the popular Ukiyo-e school of woodblock print designers during its golden age, famous throughout Japan within his own lifetime, an immeasurable influence upon nineteenth century French artists, such as Vincent Van Gogh, Édouard Manet and Claude Monet, and is a continuing source of inspiration and admiration throughout the world today for his portraits of sumptuously garbed courtesans and sensitively drawn depictions of everyday life in eighteenth century Edo. This volume, the first catalogue to document all of Utamaro's known print designs in the broadsheet format, provides a comprehensive descriptive listing of the artist's works, along with more than a hundred and thirty reproductions of his prints, with accompanying indices to aid in the location of specific works by publisher's mark, subject, or title. This groundbreaking publication, the product of more than two decades of exhaustive research, forms a record of the artist's works that will serve as a lasting reference source for connoisseurs, curators, and dealers alike. Gina Collia-Suzuki is an artist and writer who lives and works on the southwest coast of England. She has been an avid collector of Japanese woodblock prints, in particular those designed by Kitagawa Utamaro, for more than two decades. Initially a student of Western art, she encountered Japanese woodblock prints for the first time in 1985 and was immediately taken by their striking and bold designs, the compositional skills of their designers and the abilities of the craftsmen responsible for carving the blocks. In 1986 she met Jack Hillier, the world-renowned Ukiyo-e scholar, who became her mentor, and their friendship lasted until Hillier's passing in 1995. For more than twenty years she has devoted herself to the study of the woodblock prints of Kitagawa Utamaro, and is the author of 'Utamaro Revealed: A Guide to Subjects, Themes and Motifs'.
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The Merry Drinkers by Kitagawa Utamaro
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Utamaro Kitagawa
Edit ProfileEducation
His teacher was Toriyama Sekien, but the greatest influence on him was the work of Kiyonaga, the dominant Ukiyo-e artist of his youth. Utamaro's talent was discovered while he was still very young by the discriminating publisher Tsuta-ya Juzaburo, who brought out many of his prints.
Career
The most outstanding of Utamaro's early works are his illustrated books, the finest of which are the albums of insects, shells, and birds published between 1787 and 1791 and reflecting the influence of the Dutch scientific publications which were entering Japan through the port of Nagasaki.
During the 1790s Utamaro reached his artistic peak. Following in the footsteps of Kiyonaga, he portrayed Japanese women, bringing out their grace and elegance. Utamaro's most original contribution to the art of the Japanese print was his close-up pictures, or Okubi-e, which concentrated on the face. He was also the undisputed master of the erotic print, a genre to which he brought all his skill as a draftsman and designer.
Utamaro's career came to an end when he was arrested in 1804 for representing the 16th-century shogun Toyotomi Hideyoshi in a disrespectful manner. Although his imprisonment was brief, he never recovered from this blow, and he died two years later.
It is estimated that Utamaro produced some 1, 500 prints, most of them devoted to celebrating the beauty of the Japanese woman. In fact, he created a special type of female beauty, tall and slender, with an oval face, sharply defined features, slanted eyes, and a tiny mouth. Often published in sets with titles like Ten Facial Types of Women, Love Poems, Flourishing Beauties of the Present Day, The Mirror of Flirting Lovers, Twelve Hours of the Green Houses, and Elegant Amusements of the Four Seasons, these prints show the life of the courtesans and teahouse waitresses of Yoshiwara, the amusement district of Edo. Other famous sets deal with genre scenes such as mothers with children or women engaged in domestic tasks. Most of these works consist of groups of single prints; others are diptychs and triptychs, the set showing the courtesans on the Ryogoku bridge being the most famous in this category. However, his great fame as well as his influence on later printmakers rests above all on his full-face pictures of the Utamaro-type beauties. In these works his sophistication and felling for female physiognomy are most fully expressed.
Achievements
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While Utamaro's subjects by and large were taken from the general repertoire of the Ukiyo-e school, it was in the style and design of his prints that he surpassed his contemporaries and followers. His use of line and color and his feeling for pattern and composition reveal a master who produced some of the finest wood blocks ever made. However, his late work shows a certain decadence and overrefinement, a tendency further accentuated in the work of his followers; yet at the height of his power he was one of the greatest of Japanese artists, and it is not pure chance that the French impressionists, notably Édouard Manet, Edgar Degas, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, were great admirers of his work.
Works
book
-
The Complete Woodblock Prints of Kitagawa Utamaro: A Descriptive Catalogue
(Kitagawa Utamaro was the leading light of the popular Uki...)
-
The Passionate Art of Kitagawa Utamaro (2 Volume Set)
(Kitagawa Utamaro (?1754-1806) is the pivotal artist of th...)
- Chorus of Birds
- Utamaro, (Masterworks of Ukiyo-e)
- The Merry Drinkers by Kitagawa Utamaro
-
The Complete Woodblock Prints of Kitagawa Utamaro: A Descriptive Catalogue
Connections
Utamaro married, although little is known about his wife and there is no record of their having had children.
