The contemporary Yakusha Ninsō Kagami, “The Mirror of Actors’ Faces,” describes Ebizō’s dress on this occasion and goes on to say that when he made his entrance as the false envoy he was unsurpassable. As a matter of fact Ebizō was particularly good at playing the villain, and the print now under discussion should be compared with Sharaku’s more famous portrait of the same actor in a somewhat similar rôle, number 16. It might also be noted that the hair arrangement with the horizontal wings of the ende kazura was traditional on the stage for the characterizations of plotting noblemen.
The print we exhibit is the only impression that is known to exist, and we would pause a moment to tell something of its recent history. When Kurth reproduced it and it was rephotographed by Nakata and as Rumpf number 106, it was in the collection of the Kunsthalle of Bremen and was heavily oxidized as may be seen in all three reproductions. In November 1922 it was reproduced still oxidized, in the catalogue of prints from the Bremen Museum that were to be sold at the Walpole Galleries in New York, and at that sale it passed into the collection of the late Arthur B. Duel, a surgeon with very deft hands whose skill was turned in moments of leisure to the cleaning of his prints with the result that we see here.
Hosoye. Yellow ground discolored by cleaning. Signed: Sharaku.
Fogg Art Museum (Duel Collection).
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