Kunisada (Toyokuni III) | Mirrors for Collage Pictures in the Modern Style
三代目歌川豐国 Utagawa Kunisada (Toyokuni III) (1786–1865)
今样押绘鉴 白拍子樱子
Actor Nakamura Fukusuke I as the Shirabyôshi Dancer Sakurako, from the series Mirrors for Collage Pictures in the Modern Style
1860
木版画 | 纵绘大判 | 36.4cm x 24.4cm
Woodblock-print | Oban tate-e | 36.4cm x 24.4cm
品相非常好
Great condition
$750
“听说了吗？听说了吗？”“听说了，听说了...”伴随着阵阵低语，帷幕拉开。只见一大群僧侣涌入舞台，看来今天，将有大事发生......以上场面，来自歌舞伎《京鹿子娘道成寺》。这个略显奇特的题目，其实是多个词语的组合：“京鹿子”是“娘（少女）”的定语，指一种产自京都附近，花纹如鹿斑的衣料；道成寺，则指和歌山县的一座已有1300年历史的寺院。著名的安珍与清姬传说，就发生于此。本剧发生在道成寺钟焚后多年，寺院正将启用新钟之际，由寺外来了一位白拍子。所谓“白拍子”，指日本古时的一种歌舞，亦指以此舞为业，带有半巫性质的艺人。这位白拍子名为花子（明治前亦作樱子），颇晓禅理，机敏美艳，在樱下极尽艺能，展现着无穷魅力；直至最后突然打翻僧众，披头散发跃上钟顶，大幕落下。全剧中段的舞蹈部分乃是戏核，在这一个小时内，花子将向观众展示各类精绝的舞蹈。本作正是取自表演花笠舞时的场景：此刻的花子头承花笠，双手持笠翻飞；媚眼如丝，朱唇微启，脸上浮动着轻轻的笑意。一袭振袖有如五月春光明媚，繁华如锦，尽显花季灿烂；深紫的衣装底色皆是漆绘而成，不惜费工耗料，成本颇高，只为能常葆华贵色泽。人物主体被丰国巧妙设计于一面华美的莳绘镜内，外缘镜框亦为漆绘，光感极佳，分明立体。伴随着空中四散的金银平目粉，观者的视线也逐渐迷离：画中的花子似乎已经从镜中脱出，即将直直地离开纸面，舞袂蹁跹，如真似幻。
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Utagawa Kunisada (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.