Danjūrō VII's Benkei as Fudō Myōōca. 1824
Utagawa Kunisada designed this in about 1824, aged about 28. It is now at The Met in New York. More about this work
About this work
Utagawa Kunisada designed this in about 1824, aged about 28. It is now at The Met in New York.
How it was made
- Surimono
- Privately commissioned Japanese prints, often New Year greetings, made in small runs on thick paper with metallic pigments and blind embossing, and usually paired with poems.
- Colour woodblock print
- In Japan these were a team effort. The artist drew the design, a carver cut it into cherry-wood blocks, one block for each colour, and a printer brushed on the pigment and rubbed each sheet by hand. Full-colour prints of this kind were called nishiki-e, “brocade pictures”, from the 1760s on.
Utagawa Kunisada
Japanese, 1786–1865
Kunisada entered Utagawa Toyokuni’s studio as a teenager and became the most prolific and commercially successful designer of his age, producing tens of thousands of designs. Kabuki actors were his main subject, alongside fashionable beauties and illustrations for popular fiction. In 1844 he took his teacher’s name, signing as Toyokuni, and he led the Utagawa school through the middle of the nineteenth century.
Written by Ochre Editions.
Ukiyo-e
Japanese woodblock prints of the floating world: actors, courtesans, landscapes and the sea.
Rights and the museum’s record
Public domain. The Met has dedicated this image to the public domain under CC0, so anyone may copy, adapt and use it, for any purpose, without asking. Our prints and files are reproductions made from the museum’s image; the museum doesn’t endorse them.
- Object number
- JP1251
- Credit
- Courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art
- Type
- Prints
- Department
- Asian Art
- Licence
- CC0 1.0 Universal
- Museum record
- See it on the museum’s site
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More by Utagawa Kunisada
All their works
Close in colour
