KUNISADA • Η Γιορτή της Κούκλας • Τρίπτυχο • Ιαπωνική Ξυλογραφία • Ukiyo-e - Ιαπωνία - Edo Period (1600-1868)

Artist: Utagawa Kunisada / Toyokuni III (歌川国貞・三代豊国, 1786–1865)
Title: 五十三次大切 雛まつり — Gojūsan tsugi ōkiri, Hina matsuri
"The Doll Festival," finale (ōkiri) of The Fifty-three Stations — title in the red cartouche, upper right of the right-hand sheet.

Subject: Eight kabuki actors posed as the figures of a hina doll stand:
– Left: 市川九蔵 Ichikawa Kuzō III, 中村福助 Nakamura Fukusuke I, 沢村田之助 Sawamura Tanosuke III
– Centre: 市川団之助 Ichikawa Dannosuke V, 市川新車 Ichikawa Shinsha I, 嵐雛助 Arashi Hinasuke VII
– Right: 市川市蔵 Ichikawa Ichizō III, 尾上和市 Onoe Waichi I

Format: Ōban triptych — three sheets, each ca. 36 × 24.5 cm (overall ca. 36 × 73.5 cm)
Technique: Nishiki-e (full-colour woodblock print) on hōsho paper
Date: ca. 1856 (Ansei 3)
Signature: 豊国画 Toyokuni ga, in the red toshidama cartouche, on all three sheets
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Condition: Very good impression with very good, fresh colour throughout. The paper is firm with a subtle texture. Minor soiling; Minor creases. Otherwise clean and presentable. Please refer to the images for full detail!

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About the print

The ōkiri was the last piece of the kabuki day: no plot to resolve, no villain to punish, just a dance turn designed to send the audience home pleased. Here the conceit is the hina stand itself. The whole tiered display comes to life, and the theatre's leading names take their places on it — a joke that would have landed instantly with an Edo audience in the third month, the month of the Doll Festival, when every household with a daughter had exactly this arrangement standing in the best room.

On the upper tier, against a yellow curtain and blossoming cherry, sit the five court musicians — the gonin-bayashi. Kunisada distributes them across all three sheets: the great taiko and the ōkawa at left, the shoulder-drum and the transverse flute at centre, and at right the chanter, instrument-less and in sober blue-grey where the others wear scarlet court robes with black lacquered caps. On the green lower step, the three servants of the doll set lounge in matching pale blue and grey with white roundels, one with a kettle and cup beside a bronze basin of yellow flowers, another sprawled among poles and a sake flask. Standing alone at the centre of the composition, in soft grey over rose, is the young woman who anchors the whole design.

Kunisada was in his mid-seventies when he cut this, still the most productive designer in Edo and still the one publishers went to for a full-width theatrical triptych. The palette here is the late-Ansei one at its best — that flat orange-red dais against the green ground, the blue sky held between the yellow drapes — and complete, well-matched triptychs from these years are considerably scarcer on the market than the single sheets.