KUNISADA— Σύγκρισεις για τριάντα έξι επιλεγμένα ποιήματα — Ιαπωνική ξυλογραφία - Ιαπωνία - Edo Period (1600-1868)

Artist: Utagawa Kunisada I / Toyokuni III 歌川国貞・三代豊国 (1786–1865)
Title: Poem by Fujiwara no Kiyomasa: (Bandō Takesaburō I as) Chūnagon Yukihira 「見立三十六歌撰之内 藤原清正 中納言行平」, from the series Mitate sanjūrokkasen no uchi 見立三十六歌撰之内 ("Σύγκριση για τις τριάντα έξι επιλεγμένες ποιήσεις")

Technique: Nishiki-e
Format: Ōban tate-e, single sheet, approx. 36 × 25 cm
Publisher: Iseya Kanekichi 伊勢屋兼吉 — seal lower left
Block-cutter: Yokokawa Horitake 横川彫竹 — signed beside the artist
Date: 1852 (Kaei 5), with paired nanushi censor seals and date seal
Genre: Yakusha-e — half-length actor portrait / mitate
----------------------------------------

Paper & condition

Very fine condition. Colours exceptionally well preserved and the paper sound. Minor soiling. Minor toning. Remnants of an old backing remain visible on the verso; otherwise nothing to note. Please study the images.
--------------------------------------------

About the print

Ariwara no Yukihira — Chūnagon Yukihira, elder brother of the poet Narihira — was banished from the capital in the ninth century and sent to live on the shore at Suma. There he is said to have fallen in love with two brine-gathering sisters, Matsukaze and Murasame, and on his recall to court left behind his hunting cloak and cap hanging on a pine; the women's grief at that pine became one of the most enduring subjects in Nō and, from there, in kabuki dance. Kunisada gives him half-length and close, in tall black eboshi and a courtier's cloak patterned with gold-worked birds among drifting clouds, the mouth set and the eyes turned away, while behind him the wind-bent pines of Suma, the blue open water and a scatter of cranes on the spit place him unmistakably in exile.

Above, in a plain cartouche, sits a verse attributed to Fujiwara no Kiyomasa (d. 958), one of the Thirty-six Immortal Poets from whom the series takes its conceit. The pairing is a mitate — poem and role set side by side without explanation, the connection left for the viewer to draw. These half-length sheets are generally reckoned among the best actor busts of Kunisada's late career, and the presence of the carver's own signature beside the artist's marks the series out as an expensive commission: Yokokawa Horitake was one of the finest block-cutters of the day, and the hair-work along the temples and the ribbed sidelocks here show why he was worth naming.