Kunisada (Toyokuni III) | Beauties Catching Fireflies (subtitled Star), Sun, Moon, and Star

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歌川国貞 Utagawa Kunisada

三代目歌川豐国 Utagawa Toyokuni III (1786–1865)

日月星之内 星
Beauties Catching Fireflies (subtitled Star), from the series of Sun, Moon, and Star

1844

木版画 | 三联续绘-纵绘大判 | 38.3cm x 25.8cm x 3
Woodblock-print | Triptych Oban tate-e triptych | 38.3cm x 25.8cm x 3

早期版次;品相完好
Early impression; great condition

萤火虫,一直是深受大众喜爱的昆虫。江户时代,格外重视季节时令的江户子们更是将“萤狩”(捕捉萤火虫)视为初夏夜的风物诗。从公家贵族,到平民百姓,自上而下,皆为这星星点点的荧光所倾倒。

杨柳岸,隅田川,孟夏的河水不疾不徐地送着轻舟,漆黑的天幕上洒满点点星光,两位身着锦衣的美人与一名手持长篙团扇的男子漫步于河岸,正与萤火虫们“斗智斗勇”。轻罗小扇扑下的流萤似乎是从天而降,捉住了它,也就像摘下了闪烁的星斗。这也正解释了作者为何在一幅名为“星”的画作中,着重描绘了萤火虫。夜正长,风也微凉,小小的虫儿,为浮世带来了无尽的乐趣与希望。

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Utagawa Toyokuni III (1786–1865)

In the pantheon of Japanese woodblock prints, some names loom large and legendary – Hokusai, Hiroshige, Utamaro, to name a few. Each in his own way revolutionized his genre. But for sheer productivity and quality and longevity, no one rivals the great Utagawa Kunisada. He was without a doubt the most prolific Ukiyo-e artist of the Edo period, and the quality of his work was remarkably high throughout his lifetime.

His life caught the tail end of the early golden age of Ukiyo-e and ended during the final, halcyon days of Japanese woodblock printmaking. His legacy lived on with many famous pupils. In between, he produced countless designs of bijin (beautiful women), warriors, legends, Surimono, more bijin, the Tale of Genji, actors, landscapes, Shunga, fan prints and even more bijin. He led the Utagawa School, home to Hiroshige among others, for nearly 40 years.

His work embraced a subtle elegance and simplicity, a timelessness, when other woodblock artists often favored busy energy. Except when it didn’t. (Read on.)

He was born in 1796 and always had a steady income from his family’s ferry business – making him unusual in the world of Ukiyo-e, where so many struggled to make ends meet. He became a student of Toyokuni when he was 15. The master gave him the name Kunisada, using the tradition of a teacher starting a student’s name with the end of his own.

After getting his start doing book designs, Kunisada saw his first major successes in the 1820s. His initial specialties were bijin and warriors, as well as erotic books. He often put his subjects in well-drawn landscapes but rarely produced pure landscapes themselves.

One example of this occurred in the early 1830s when, reacting to the runaway success of Hiroshige’s Great Tokaido series, he began his own series that copied Hiroshige’s designs but placed a beautiful woman in the foreground. While Hiroshige’s prints were oban yoko-e (horizontal oban prints), Kunisada’s “copies” were smaller chuban-size prints, meaning two could be cut from a single oban-sized sheet. These little prints were phenomenally successful – as successful at least as Hiroshige’s – and eventually Kunisada was publishing his little Tokaido prints ahead of Hiroshige’s, and thus designing his own background landscapes.

Kunisada would later produce the “two-brush” Tokaido series with Hiroshige in the 1850s, in which he drew figures in the foreground while Hiroshige supplied beautiful little landscapes behind them. This was one of several notable woodblock print collaborations during his lifetime.

By then, Kunisada had taken the name Toyokuni III, to honor his master. (Toyokuni II had already been taken by Toyoshige, though Kunisada didn’t acknowledge the legitimacy. But that’s another story for another day.)

He kept going and going. In fact, in his long life, 1852 was his most productive year. His design skills were later matched by new technologies in woodblock prints, and some of his final series feature spectacular and intricate production, such as “Lasting Impressions of a Later Genji Collection” in 1859-61 and “A Contest of Magic Scenes by Toyokuni” in 1861-4. Okay – this series was not subtle: It featured over-the-top designs of Kabuki actors with fabled and ghostly beasts. Double-printing, mica, burnishing, raised printing, heavy paper, complex bokashi – no expense was spared for these deluxe editions.

Kunisada was generous with his students, many of whom went on to great success, including Kunichika, Kunisada II, Sadahide, and Kunihisa II. This last pupil, who among other projects designed the in-set landscapes in Kunisada’s wonderful “100 Famous Sights in Edo Matched with Beautiful Women” in 1857-1858, was a rarity among Ukiyo-e artists – a woman.

Kunisada died in 1865, just three years before the end of the Tokugawa epoch, leaving behind a body of work unmatched in his time.

Don’t believe me? Checkout The Kunisada Project. It’s all there. Just make sure you have some time.

Citation: Research for this brief biography included “Japanese Woodblock Prints” by Andreas Marks (Tuttle; 2010), among other sources.