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Kitagawa Utamaro (c. 1753 - 31 October 1806)
Despite Kitagawa Utamaro's success and celebrity status among his own world of
popular culture, little is known of his life and career. There are no
contemporary documents to help art historians certify his date of birth,
birthplace, and family background. The most accepted theory is that he was
born in 1753, probably Edo (present-day Tokyo), and his father was an owner
of a Tea-house.
Utamaro is one of the most highly regarded practitioners of the ukiyo-e genre
of woodblock prints, especially for his portraits of female beauties, or
bijin-ga.
At the approximate age of twenty-two, his earliest known professional artistic
work was created, a cover for a Kabuki playbook in 1775 that was published under
a pseudonym, the go of Toyoaki. He then produced a number of actor and
warrior prints, along with theatre programmes, and other such materials. From
the spring of 1781, he switched his go to Utamaro, and
began painting and designing woodblock prints of women, but these early works
are not considered of important value.
Apparently, Utamaro married, although little is known about his wife and there
is no record of their having children.
In about 1791 Utamaro gave up designing prints for books and concentrated on
making single portraits of women displayed in half-length, rather than the
prints of women in groups favoured by other ukiyo-e artists. In 1793 he acheived
recognition as an artist, and his semi-exclusive arrangement with the publisher
Tsutaya Juzaburo was terminated. He then went on to produce several very famous
series of works, all featuring women of the Yoshiwara district.
Over the years, he also occupied himself with a number of volumes of animal,
insect, and nature studies, as well as shunga, or erotica. Shunga prints
were quite acceptable in Japanese culture, not associated with a negative concept
of pornography as found in western cultures, but considered rather as a natural
aspect of human behavior, and circulated among all levels of Japanese society.
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