context: painting > prints > artists

Kitagawa Utamaro 1753-1806

Utamaro at work?

The fact that he often signed things 'Utamaro the physiognomist' makes it clear that, even when painting named subjects (try to tell them apart!), he was painting types and not people, making general points about kinds of people rather than individuals. Nonetheless, he was a wonderful painter of women, of costumes and hair and bodies (women in prints, illustrated by an Utamaro image) - the image here has three great examples, as well as what I hope is a self-portrait, given that it is called 'Painting At Home' and the male looks rather like one other image I've seen that was published as a self-portrait. The painting in progress is very much not in the ukiyo-e style, of course.

I've not seen any works that I can read this way, but he was jailed a few times for producing prints that were considered subversive and politically critical of the government - I have seen no suggestion that his sometimes hardcore pornography got him in any trouble (two pics illustrating sex in printmaking).

My opinion is that there have been few artists anywhere in the world who have reached such a peak of perfection. The fluency and delicacy and richness of his line, his subtle and daring sense of colour and pattern, are peerless.

backwards: sharaku

forwards: hokusai