Kunisada
However, among European and American collectors of Japanese prints, beginning in the late 19th and early 20th century, all three of these artists were actually regarded as rather inferior to the greats of classical ukiyo-e, and therefore as having contributed considerably to the downfall of their art.
A small licensed and hereditary ferry-boat service belonged to his family, and the income derived from this business provided a certain basic financial security to engage in leisure activities such as painting.
His early sketches at that time impressed Toyokuni, the great master of the Utagawa school[1] and prominent designer of kabuki and actor-portrait prints.
In 1809 he was referred to in contemporary sources as the "star attraction" of the Utagawa school, and soon thereafter was considered as at least equal to his teacher Toyokuni in the area of book illustration.
Always at the vanguard of his time, and in tune with the tastes of the public, he continuously developed his style, which was sometimes radically changed, and did not adhere to stylistic constraints set by any of his contemporaries.
Following the traditional pattern of the Utagawa school, Kunisada's main occupation was kabuki and actor prints, and about 60% of his designs fall in this category.
However he was also highly active in the area of bijin-ga prints (comprising about 15% of his complete works), and their total number was far higher than any other artist of his time.
For a long time (1835–1850) he had an almost complete monopoly on the genre of prints related to The Tale of Genji; it was only after 1850 that other artists began to produce similar designs.
This co-operation was in large part politically motivated in order to demonstrate solidarity against the intensified censorship regulations of the Tenpō Reforms.
[4] Kunisada had a five-decade prominent career, during which his work was always phenomenally popular and sold in the thousands, letting him become the all-time bestselling designer of Japanese woodblock prints.
[5] An example of the contempt early Western critics subjected Kunisada's work to:[6] This very undistinguished artist was one of the most prolific of the ukiyo-e school.
All that meaningless complexity of design, coarseness of colour, and carelessness of printing which we associate with the final ruin of the art of colour-prints finds full expression with him.It is only with the 1990s that Kunisada's work re-gained widespread appreciation.
Nowadays, Kunisada is again well-regarded as one of the main masters of the ukiyo-e art: Kunisada became a leading artist of the ukiyo-e school at an early age thanks to his amazing skill in capturing the likeliness of kabuki actors, creating must-have souvenirs for their legions of fans.Accurately portraying women of different ages and occupations, from Yoshiwara courtesans to daughters of middle-class families, he allows us to sense their inner world through their lively facial expressions, in pictures of convincing realism.Recent Exhibits: Featured in Major Collections:
