Three Kabuki Actors Playing Hanetsukica. 1823
Utagawa Kuniyasu designed this in about 1823, aged about 19. It is now at The Met in New York. More about this work
About this work
Utagawa Kuniyasu designed this in about 1823, aged about 19. 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.
- Triptych
- Three sheets designed to sit side by side and read as one wide picture.
Utagawa Kuniyasu
Japanese, 1794–1834
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
- 2001.715.4a–c
- 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
Report this work
Close in colour
