The Actors Otani Hiroji III as Yokambei (right), Nakamura Tomijuro I as Kuzunoha (center), and Bando Mitsugoro I as Yakambei (left), in the Last Scene from the Play Shinodazuma (The Wife from Shinoda Forest), Performed as a Supplement to the Play Kikyo-zome Onna Urakata (Female Diviner in Deep Violet), at the Morita Theater from the Ninth Day of the Ninth Month, 1776c. 1776
Katsukawa Shunshō designed this in about 1776, aged about 45. It is now at the Art Institute of Chicago. More about this work
About this work
A work made of color woodblock print; hosoban; triptych.
Description from the Art Institute of Chicago.
Katsukawa Shunshō designed this in about 1776, aged about 45. It is now at the Art Institute of Chicago.
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.
- Triptych
- Three sheets designed to sit side by side and read as one wide picture.
Katsukawa Shunshō
Japanese, 1726–1792
Shunshō founded the Katsukawa school and changed the way kabuki actors were portrayed, giving them recognisable individual features rather than standard types. From the late 1760s his actor designs, often in the narrow hosoban format, dominated the field. He was also a refined painter of beautiful women, and the young Hokusai spent his early years in his studio under the name Shunrō.
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 Art Institute of Chicago 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
- 1938.499
- Credit
- Courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago
- Type
- Department
- Arts of Asia
- Licence
- CC0 1.0 Universal
- Museum record
- See it on the museum’s site
Report this work
More by Katsukawa Shunshō
All their works
Close in colour
