Kitagawa Utamaro I
Born 1753; died Edo [now Tokyo], 1806.
Japanese painter and woodblock-print designer. He was a central figure of the literary and artistic world of Edo and became one of the better-known Japanese ukiyoe (‘pictures of the floating world’) artists outside Japan. His birthplace is uncertain, and of his youth it is known only that he was a pupil of the painter and literatus Toriyama Sekien (1712–88). His first production was the cover picture to the second volume of a book published in 1775. His other early work consisted of illustrations for theatre playbills, collections of poems and other books, and actor prints in the style of Katsukawa shunsho-. He also produced images of beautiful women (bijinga), following the styles of Kitao shigemasa and Torii Kiyonaga (see Torii, (8)). In the early 1780s he moved into the residence of the publisher Tsutaya Ju-zaburo- (1750–97), who helped to develop and promote Utamaro’s talent. During the 1780s, the two cooperated in producing collections of humorous 31-syllable verses known as kyo-ka, which contained verses by kyo-ka poets with finely produced woodblock-print designs by Utamaro, such as the Picture Book of Selected Insects (Ehon mushi erami; 1788), which deals with insects, frogs, snakes and flowers. Utamaro also did skilled erotica (shunga) such as the Picture Book of Pillow Poems (Ehon uta makura; colour woodblock print; 1789; see fig.), which, together with the kyo-ka collections, made him well known.
Many of his masterpieces are half-length portraits and bust portraits of women, which he began to produce in the early 1790s, sometimes in the ‘pillar print’ (hashirae) format (see Japan, §IX, 2(iii)). Popular courtesans and famous beauties of Edo were represented in a sensuous and stylish manner that reflected the aesthetic of iki, an Edo consciousness of beauty that emphasized coquetry, a fresh angle on conventional themes, lightness, suggestion and incompleteness. Utamaro probably brought the genre of ukiyoe bijinga to maturity with his close-up views (‘large-head’ portraits; o-kubie) of contemporary beauties, which demonstrate his insight into the psychology of his subjects. Examples include the series Selected Poems on Love (Kasen koi no bu; c. early 1790s) and Beauty at Toilet from the series Seven Aspects of Women Looking into Mirrors (Sugatami shichinin kesho-; c. mid-1790s), in which the format is nearly filled by the image of a young woman contemplating her reflection in a large mirror. Utamaro also depicted groups of beauties and triptychs featuring full-length poses. He also represented not only high-ranking courtesans, but also wives and daughters of merchants, children and low-ranking prostitutes. A feature of his style was the use of flesh-coloured lines for faces rather than the usual black lines; in some cases he dispensed with the outline altogether. When, as in Beauty at Toilet, he used subdued colours for the larger areas of the print, the red tones of undergarments and lips became accordingly striking. Some of Utamaro’s prints made use of unusual techniques, such as gluing textured gauze or particles of sand to the block instead of carving it, to make ‘net prints’ (nunomezuri).
Rather than employing conventional poses and angles, Utamaro often captured almost snapshot-like moments of human action (see fig.), as in Courtesan Writing a Letter from the half-length series Six Poets of the Yoshiwara (Seiro- rokkasen; published after the turn of the century) and in a triptych of women making dresses (c. mid-1790s). Even so, Utamaro continued to depict women as ideals of feminine beauty rather than to delineate individual features that would make his subjects recognizable. His reasons were partly aesthetic, partly attributable to censorship laws. A series of Famous Beauties Selected from Six Houses (Ko-mei bijin rokkasen; c. 1794) was reissued as the Fashionable Six Poetic Immortals (Fu-ryu- rokkasen; c. 1796) in response to government decrees that forbade the identification by name on prints of women other than courtesans. The use of a rebus-like picture-puzzle beside the series title cartouche was eliminated on the reissued prints and replaced with images of six poets in the rectangles. Only Hanao-gi of the O-giya, a courtesan, was identified, and even direct references to her had to be dropped in another print series of 1794 owing to a scandal. In 1804, Utamaro published the triptych Taiko- Hideyoshi and his Five Wives on an Excursion to Eastern Kyoto (Taiko- gosai rakuto- yu-ran no zu), a subject derived from a popular historical novel which had been banned by the authorities. For producing this triptych and three other single-sheet prints, Utamaro was sentenced in 1804 to three days in jail and fifty days of house arrest in handcuffs. The experience may have had some effect on his spirits and health. He died the following year.
Utamaro was one of the most popular artists in the West from an early date. Edmond de Goncourt published a monograph on the artist in 1891, although Utamaro was known to the French before that time. In the same year Mary Cassatt produced a series of ten colour etchings in which the influence of Utamaro is thought to have been considerable. An exhibition in 1893 at the Galerie Durand-Ruel in Paris of prints by Utamaro and Ando- Hiroshige enhanced the popularity of both artists. Utamaro was one of a number of Japanese artists, such as Katsushika Hokusai and Hiroshige, who affected the course of French, English and American art during the second half of the 19th century and who continued to be well regarded in the 20th.
Brenda G. Jordan. "Kitagawa Utamaro." In Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online, http://www.oxfordartonline.com.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/subscriber/article/grove/art/T046743 (accessed May 8, 2012).
