Kabuki Actor Nakamura Utaemon III as the Sword Master Kyōgoku Takumi, from the series Issei ichidai atari Kyōgen (Hits of a Lifetime of Kyōgen)1825
Shunkōsai Hokushū designed this in 1825. It is now at The Met in New York. More about this work
About this work
Shunkōsai Hokushū designed this in 1825. It is now at The Met in New York.
How it was made
- 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.
Shunkōsai Hokushū
Japanese
Hokushū was the leading designer of kabuki actor pictures in Osaka in the 1810s and 1820s. Osaka designs of this kind, often commissioned by actors’ fan clubs, favoured close, intense portraits and lavish finishes, including metallic pigments. Working chiefly in the large ōban format, he recorded the city’s star actors in their celebrated roles, among them the great Nakamura Utaemon III.
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
- 2011.130
- 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
