Utagawa Yoshiiku Art

"Candy Seller" (飴売りうずまつ 市村羽左衛門) Japanese Woodblock on Rice Paper This piece depicts Ichimura Uzaemon as the Candy Peddler Uzumatsu. He is playing a stringed instrument (the shamisen...

Courtesan at Yoshiwara Edomachi - Figurative Japanese Woodblock Print on Paper Full color woodcut print of two women in elaborate gowns by Utagawa Yoshiiku (Ochiai Yoshiiku) (Japanese, 1833-1904). Two women are dressed in colorful robes with crossed arms. They are underneath a plum blossom tree in bloom, at night. In the background there is a building with many rooms. Valuable polychrome woodblock print of vertical large oban (大判) format made by Utagawa Yoshiiku (歌川芳幾), the famous artist also known as Ochiai Yoshiiku (落合芳幾), and depicting the courtesan Shizuka (しづか), of the house of pleasure Matsumotoro (松本楼), together with her young kamuro (禿) assistant. The couple is escorted by a kanabohiki (金棒引き) watchman holding a lantern and a metal rod with rings to make noise and alert the crowd. The work, produced in August 1869 by the publisher Tsunajima Kamekichi (綱島亀吉), is taken from the “Twelve Months of Yoshiwara” (よし原十二ヶ月のうち), an elegant series of prints dedicated to the famous red light district of Edo (江戸), and is paired with the “month of leaves” Hazuki (葉月), that is August. Ochiai Yoshiiku (Japanese, 1833-1904) was an ukiyo-e artist from the end of the Edo Period to the Meiji Period. He has created works which are essential to the history of ukiyo-e, such as“Twenty-eight Famous Murders with Verse”, a series of chimidoro-e (bloody paintings) which Yoshiiku and Tsukioka Yoshitoshi collaborated together, and “Shimbun (newspaper) Nishiki-e” that illustrated Meiji news articles with ukiyo-e. Born the son of teahouse proprietor Asakusa Tamichi in 1833, Yoshiiku became a student of ukiyo-e artist Utagawa Kuniyoshi toward the end of the 1840s. His earliest known work dates to 1852 when he provided the backgrounds to some actor prints by his master. Yoshiiku's earliest works were portraits of actors (yakusha-e), beauties (bijin-ga), and warriors (musha-e). He later followed Kuniyoshi into making satirical and humorous pieces, and became the leading name in the field after Kuniyosh's death in 1861. He illustrated the Tokyo Nichi Nichi...