Page:A history of Japanese colour-prints by Woldemar von Seidlitz.djvu/333

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THE PERIOD OF UTAMARO
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  • double sheets (of the ninth decade), beginning with a stroll on the beach, ending with a game of Kaiawase, with girls crouching round a circle formed of shell-fish.
  • Representations of foreign birds, 10 sheets (Coll. Gonse in Paris).
  • To a book of larger size belong probably: a falcon on a blossoming plum-tree (Coll. Gonse) and a crane by his nest on a pine branch (Coll. Bing).
  • Seven sheets with bouquets of flowers belong to a book printed in black and white (Coll. Gillot).
  • Two single sheets (Coll. Bing); two crabs with some sea-weed; a chrysanthemum stem and rice straw.
  • To a series belong: 1, two flower-boxes; 2, a toad with a lotus-flower in its mouth; 3, a tortoise with the same; 4, a deity holding a flower-vase.

Books of erotic contents:—

  • Utamakura, the Poem of the Pillow, 1788; on the first page a goddess of the sea. His most beautiful work of this kind.
  • Yenipon hanafubuki, fallen blossoms, 3 vols., 1802.

For the rest, the reader may be referred to the catalogue of Utamaro's works in Kurth, Utamaro, which runs to 530 numbers, as against 285 in Goncourt.

Together with Shunyei he published a series of wrestlers, in which the pairs of female spectators are done by Utamaro. Goncourt (page 186) refers to three works of other artists (Hokusai, Toyokuni, &c), to which Utamaro contributed single sheets.

Strange reproduces, on page 42, a female figure in half-length, and in pl. iv. a similar one in the form of a celebrated poetess. Fenollosa (Outline, pl. xv.) reproduces a not very characteristic print. Other reproductions in Bing's essay in the Studio of 1895.

His pupil, Koikawa Shuncho, married his widow, took his name, and under it continued his master's activity from 1808 to 1820 with the same publishing firm; after 1820 he signed him-