There are three impressions in America. The one we exhibit bears a hand-written inscription giving the name of the actor and it has been previously reproduced in the dealer’s advertisement to which reference has been made under number 40 and elsewhere. The Vignier-Inada Catalogue, number 304, shows another impression which is reproduced again as Rumpf number 56.
Hosoye. Yellow ground. Signed: Tōshūsai Sharaku.
Colburn Collection.
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Sakata Hangorō III as a Priest of Kwannon, Protector of Children (Kosodate-no-Kwannon-bō).
For another portrait of him in the same rôle see number 47.
Here his outer robe is black, his kimono pale gray, and between them is a band having a pattern of deep rose. His shaven cheek and chin as well as the background of his mon are in a color now decomposed but apparently once light blue.
We place the print tentatively with the two that precede it, as the right-hand sheet of a triptych.
The only impression previously recorded is reproduced as Rumpf number 72 and is the one with an inscription in the dealer’s advertisement referred to under number 40. The remaining one that is known to exist is in an American collection but is in less good condition than the impression shown here.
Hosoye. Yellow ground. Signed: Tōshūsai Sharaku.
The Art Institute of Chicago (Buckingham Collection).
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