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Artist: Utagawa Kunisada [歌川 国貞] a.k.a. Utagawa Toyokuni III [三代歌川豊国] (Japanese, 1786 – 1865). Signed: Kunisada ga [国貞画] in a red double-gourd cartouche Publisher: Unknown (no seal). Date: c. 1832 Izzard: "... red cloth decorated with the characters Yauan, one of Ichikawa Danjūrō VII [市川団十郎] (Japanese, 1791 – 1859) poetry names, and the name of his residence in Fukagawa. The absence of publisher's emblem and censorship seals may indicate that this was a privately issued print, not for public use". Ref.: [LIB-2967.2022] Utagawa Kunisada (1786 – 1865): His world revisited / Catalogue № 17, Exhibition March 17-21, 2021. — NY: Sebastian Izzard, LLC., 2021; p. 112-3, fig. 32). Size: Fan print (aiban uchiwa-e); 235 x 295 mm. -
Title: Eleventh lunar month (Chuto no zu); Series: Fashionable Twelve Months (Imayo juni-kagetsu). Another version of translation: Modern Beauties of Twelve Months. Artist: Utagawa Toyokuni I [歌川豊国] (1769–1825). Pubisher: Ibaya Senzaburō [伊場屋仙三郎] (Japanese, 1815 – 1869), seal: Dansendō [伊場仙]. Signed: Toyokuni ga and sealed with toshidama. Date-kiwame seal: Ushi (ox), Bunsei 5 (1822). Size: double-sheet uncut fan print ( aiban uchiwa-e), 219 x 295 mm.
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Title: Third lunar month [弥生] (Yayoi no zu); Series: Fashionable Twelve Months (Imayo juni-kagetsu). Another version of translation: Modern Beauties of Twelve Months. Artist: Utagawa Toyokuni I [歌川豊国] (1769–1825). Pubisher: Ibaya Senzaburō [伊場屋仙三郎] (Japanese, 1815 – 1869), seal: Dansendō [伊場仙]. Signed: Toyokuni ga and sealed with toshidama. Date-kiwame seal: Ushi (ox), Bunsei 5 (1822). Size: double-sheet uncut fan print ( aiban uchiwa-e), 219 x 295 mm.
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Artist: Utagawa Kuniyoshi [歌川 國芳] (Japanese, 1798 – 1861).Title: Suzume fukube [美人団扇絵] (Sparrow and gourds).
Series: Kacho awase [花鳥合] (Collection of flowers and birds).
Publisher: Aritaya Seiemon [有田屋 清右衛門] (Japanese, fl. c. 1830 – 1862); Seal: Marks 17-011 | 014d.Signed: Ichiyosai Kuniyoshi ga in a red cartouche and sealed with paulownia crest (kiri mon).
Size: Uchiwa-e (untrimmed fan print) 296 x 230 mm.
Double nanushi censor seals: Kinugasa & Watanabe, Kaei 2-3 (1849–50).
Ref.: Kuniyoshi Project. -
Title: Fourth lunar month [卯月] (Uzuki no zu); Series: Fashionable Twelve Months (Imayo juni-kagetsu). Another version of translation: Modern Beauties of Twelve Months. Artist: Utagawa Toyokuni I [歌川豊国] (1769–1825). Pubisher: Ibaya Senzaburō [伊場屋仙三郎] (Japanese, 1815 – 1869), seal: Dansendō [伊場仙]. Signed: Toyokuni ga and sealed with toshidama. Date-kiwame seal: Ushi (ox), Bunsei 5 (1822). Size: double-sheet uncut fan print ( aiban uchiwa-e), 219 x 295 mm.
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Artist: Utagawa Kuniyoshi [歌川 國芳] (Japanese, 1798 – 1861). Publisher: Izuzen (fl. c. 1800s – 1840s) (Marks 06-029|U103b). Signed: Ichiyosai Kuniyoshi ga in a red cartouche and sealed with paulownia crest (kiri mon). Double nanushi censor seals: Fuku & Muramatsu, 1849-51 (Kaei 2 – Kaei 4). Young woman in front of the western-style framed portrait of Soga Tokimune, who is depicted after having his kusazuri ripped off by Asahina Saburō. The series of fan prints A Collection of Pictures in Modern Style [今様額面合] (Imayô gakumen awase) can be found at Kuniyoshi Project. Soga Tokimune, a.k.a. Soga no Gorō [曾我時致] (Japanese, 1174 – 1193), a historical figure and a character of an epic tale Soga Monogatari [曽我物語] (A Tale of Soga Brothers). Asahina Saburō [朝比奈 三朗], a.k.a. Asahina Yoshihide [朝比奈 義秀] is also mentioned in the Soga Monogatari. Kusazuri [草摺] (くさずり) – tassets on a suit of a samurai's armour. Another Kuniyoshi's print with the same characters: Goro Tokimune and Asahina Saburo; Series: The Tale of Soga Brothers; Publisher: Ibaya Senzaburō; Date: 1843-1845; Size: Vertical Ōban: 359 x 245 mm.
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Title: Seventh lunar month [初秋] (Hatsuaki no zu); Series: Fashionable Twelve Months (Imayo juni-kagetsu). Another version of translation: Modern Beauties of Twelve Months. Artist: Utagawa Toyokuni I [歌川豊国] (1769–1825). Pubisher: Ibaya Senzaburō [伊場屋仙三郎] (Japanese, 1815 – 1869), seal: Dansendō [伊場仙]. Signed: Toyokuni ga and sealed with toshidama. Date-kiwame seal: Ushi (ox), Bunsei 5 (1822). Size: double-sheet uncut fan print ( aiban uchiwa-e), 219 x 295 mm.
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Artist: Utagawa Kuniyoshi [歌川 國芳] (Japanese, 1798 – 1861). Publisher: Enshuya Matabei [遠州屋又兵衛] (Japanese, fl. c. 178 – 1881) – no seal, ref: Kunisada Project. Title: A Summer Evening [夏乃夕暮] (Natsu no Yūgure). A young woman in purple kimono decorated with cranes and waves catching a firefly among yellow and purple flowers. Signed: Ichiyosai Kuniyoshi ga [一勇斎 国芳 画] in a red cartouche and sealed with paulownia (kiri mon). Date seal and double nanushi censor seals: Fuku & Muramatsu, 1853 (Kaei 6, 2nd month). No publisher's seal. Size: Uchiwa-e (untrimmed fan print) 228 x 296 mm. The yellow flower is probably Patrinia scabiosifolia (ominaeshi) [女郎花]. The purple flower seems to be Platycodon grandiflorus or Balloon Flower (kikyō) [桔梗]. Besides, there are visible panicles of Miscanthus sinensis, or Japanese pampas grass (susuki) [薄]. These three are part of the Seven Grasses of Autumn (aki no nanakusa) [秋の七草]. -
Title: Ninth lunar month [菊月] (Kikuzuki no zu); Series: Fashionable Twelve Months (Imayo juni-kagetsu). Another version of translation: Modern Beauties of Twelve Months. Artist: Utagawa Toyokuni I [歌川豊国] (1769–1825). Pubisher: Ibaya Senzaburō [伊場屋仙三郎] (Japanese, 1815 – 1869), seal: Dansendō [伊場仙]. Signed: Toyokuni ga and sealed with toshidama. Date-kiwame seal: Ushi (ox), Bunsei 5 (1822). Size: double-sheet uncut fan print ( aiban uchiwa-e), 219 x 295 mm.
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Artist: Utagawa Kunisada [歌川 国貞] a.k.a. Utagawa Toyokuni III [三代歌川豊国] (Japanese, 1786 – 1865). Signed: Toyokuni ga [豊国 画] in a red toshidama cartouche. Publisher: Ibaya Senzaburō [伊場屋仙三郎] (Japanese, c. 1815 – 1869). Double nanushi censor seals: Hama & Magome, Kaei 2-5 (1849 – 1852). An uncut fan print (uchiwa-e, 220 x 292 mm) depicts a beautiful woman sitting on a balcony overlooking a bay and reading a book. Above the book, there is an obi with a pattern of stripes or modified key fret motif, with lettering that reads: 菅原島 [Sugawara-jima] and 美立 [mitate]. The lettering and the blossoming plum branch next to the obi provide an allusion to Sugawara no Michizane [菅原 道真/菅原 道眞] (Japanese, 845 – 903) - a prominent scholar and poet of Heian period exiled from Kyoto to the island of Kyushu as a result of another courtier's slander. A legend says that his beloved plum tree was so fond of its master that it flew to Kyushu with Sugawara. The Davis Museum at Wellesley College describes the print as belonging to the series A Parody of Sugawara Stripe Patterns (Mitate Sugawara-jima). To make the fact of an allusion transparent, Kunisada had changed the usual way of writing "Sugawara stripes" from 菅原縞 to 菅原島 and "mitate" from 見立 to 美立. An unusual spelling was also used to provide additional information to the reader in other cultures. E.g. during the Prohibition Era, the West Coast United States speakeasy bars and bordellos misspelt the items on a menu ("scollops") or in a neon sign ("Martuni's") to tell: here we have more pleasures for you than you may have expected. After Tenpō reforms, the printing of bijin-ga (美人画, "picture of beautiful woman") images was restricted. Our print disguises a typical bijin-ga as an advertisement of an obi (帯, a kimono sash) fabric pattern. "The market of portraits was satisfied and the authorities fooled" [Rebecca Salter. Japanese popular prints. — Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2006]. -
Title: Gotenyama [御殿山] – one of the most popular cherry blossom viewing spots; it is a hill at Shinagawa [品川], the second station on the Tōkaidō road [東海道], located on the shores of Edo Bay [江戸湾]. Series: A Collection of Mountains [山つくし] (Yama tsukushi) Artist: Utagawa Kunisada [歌川 国貞] a.k.a. Utagawa Toyokuni III [三代歌川豊国] (Japanese, 1786 – 12 January 1865). Block carver: Yokokawa Takejirō, seal: [彫竹] – Hori Take. Publisher: Yama-Ta; seal: [板元, 太] – Hanmoto, Ta; Marks 19-044 | U421b: An unknown publisher in Edo, fl. c. 1815-61. Combined date seal and kiwame censor seal: Ansei 6 (1851). Signed: Toyokuni ga [豊国 画] in a red toshidama cartouche. Size: Fan print (uchiwa-e) 227 x 287 mm. -
Artist: Utagawa Kunisada [歌川 国貞] a.k.a. Utagawa Toyokuni III [三代 歌川 豊国] (Japanese, 1786 – 1865). Signed: Kōchōrō Kunisada ga [香蝶楼国貞画] in a double-gourd cartouche. Iseya Sōemon [伊勢屋惣右衛門] (Japanese, 1776 – 1862); seal: Ue [上] (Marks 02-041 | 156a). Inscription in the red stripe: Five types of haiku in shōfū style [俳諧五流蕉風] (Haikai gōryū shōfū). Censor's seal: Watari [渡] (Watanabe Shōemon), VI/1842–V ic/1846. Media: Fan print [団扇絵] (Uchiwa-e); size: 225 x 292 mm. An uncut fan print depicts a young woman with an insect (firefly) cage in her left hand. Her striped kimono is adorned with the design of white, grey and blue cherry blossoms. Two of the Seven Grasses of Autumn [秋の七草] (aki no nanakusa), namely Platycodon grandiflorus (kikyō) [桔梗] a.k.a. Chinese bellflower (or balloon flower) and Patrinia scabiosifolia (ominaeshi) [女郎花] a. k.a. Eastern (or Golden) Valerian, are seen on her right-hand side. -
Title: Early Spring [初春之図] (Hatsuharu no zu); Series: Fashionable Twelve Months [今様十二ヶ月] (Imayo juni-kagetsu). Another version of translation: Modern Beauties of Twelve Months. Artist: Utagawa Toyokuni I [歌川豊国] (1769–1825). Pubisher: Ibaya Senzaburō [伊場屋仙三郎] (Japanese, 1815 – 1869), seal: Dansendō [伊場仙]. Signed: Toyokuni ga [豊国画] and sealed with toshidama. Date-kiwame seal: Ushi (ox), Bunsei 5 (1822). Size: double-sheet uncut fan print ( aiban uchiwa-e), each 217 x 288 mm. Ref: Tokyo Museum Collection.
Other five prints of this series: SVJP 0326.2020; SVJP-0362.2022; SVJP-0363.2022; SVJP-0364.2022; SVJP-0365.2022.
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Artist: Utagawa Kunisada [歌川 国貞] a.k.a. Utagawa Toyokuni III [三代歌川豊国] (Japanese, 1786 – 1865). Publisher: Iseya Sōemon [伊勢屋惣右衛門] (Japanese, c. 1776 – 1862). Signed: Kunisada ga within a double toshidama. Date-kiwame seals: Bunsei 11 (1828). -
An uncut fan print shows a young woman holding a basket on a landscape background with hills and pines under a rising sun. Haruo Shirane: "Under the luni-solar calendar, the New Year coincided with the beginning of spring, making it the most important observance of the year for the aristocracy. In the Heian period, New Year ceremonies extended from New Year’s Day (Ganjitsu) to the Day of the Rat (Nenohi), which usually fell on the seventh day of the First Month, when courtiers went out to the fields (no), pulled up small pines, and gathered new herbs (wakana) as a prayer for long life. This ritual gradually spread to the provinces and to commoners, eventually resulting in the New Year practice of the gate pine (kadomatsu), in which a pair of small pines was placed at the gate of a house. A popular Heian-period painting topic representing the First Month was “prayers on the Day of the Rat” (Nenohi no asobi), which depicted the auspicious scene of pulling up small pines in a spring field. Both young herbs and gathering young herbs, particularly at Kasuga Field, became major poetic topics for the First Month, appearing in both the spring and celebration (ga) books of the Kokinshū (Collection of Japanese Poems Old and New, ca. 905). By the Kamakura period, the observance of the Day of the Rat had been abandoned at the imperial court, but the custom of gathering and eating young greens continued as the annual ceremony known as the Seven Grasses (Nanakusa). Note: The Heian-period ritual of pulling up the roots of small pines (komatsu ) on the first Day of the Rat derives from the homonyms ne (rat) and ne (root). Pulling up roots was auspicious, since it implied lengthening the year. The rising sun (hinode) was considered an auspicious sight, particularly at the beginning of the year". [Haruo Shirane, Japan and the Culture of the Four Seasons. Nature, Literature, and the Arts. — Columbia University, NY, 2012]. Title: Gathering of the young herbs on the Day of the Rat [子の日乃若菜] (Nenohi no wakana). Series: Three elegant sources of light [風流三光の内] (fūryū sankō no uchi); meaning the sun, the moon and the stars). Artist: Utagawa Kunisada [歌川 国貞]; a.k.a. Utagawa Toyokuni III [三代歌川豊国] (Japanese, 1786 – 1865). Signed: Toyokuni ga [豊国 画] in a yellow toshidama cartouche. Publisher’s seal: Izuzen (Marks: seal 06-029 | U103b) Date and double nanushi censor seals: Mera and Watanabe, Kaei 6 (1853). A similar theme can be found in Kunisadai's triptych published in about 1844 (HARA SHOBO):
豊国三代「豊歳子日若菜摘ノ図」
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Artist: Utagawa Toyokuni I [歌川豊国] (1769–1825). Pubisher: Enshūya Matabei (遠州屋又兵衛) (c. 1768 – 1881), seal name: Enmata [ 遠又]. Signed: Toyokuni ga [豊国画]. Date-aratame censor seal: 未改, Bunsei 6 (1823). Size: uchiwa-e; 233 x 262 mm. Ref: Israel Goldman. Japanese Prints, Paintings and Books / Catalogue 28, 2022: № 14. -
Artist: Utagawa Kunisada [歌川 国貞], a.k.a. Utagawa Toyokuni III [三代 歌川 豊国] (Japanese, 1786 – 1865). Signed: Toyokuni ga [豊国 画] in a red toshidama cartouche Block carver: Yokokawa Takejirō [横川竹二郎] (Japanese, fl. 1845 – 1863), seal: 彫竹 – hori Take. Publisher: Ibaya Senzaburō [伊場屋仙三郎] (Japanese, fl. c. 1845 – 1847). Media: Untrimmed fan print (uchiwa-e), 230 x 295 mm. Combined date seal and kiwame censor seal: Ansei 6 (1859). Title: Princess Sotoori [衣通姫] (Sotoori-hime) – Sotoori-hime was a concubine of Emperor Ingyo (reigned AD 412-53), and one of the Three Gods of Japanese Poetry [和歌三神] (Waka sanjin). Series: Chronicles of Elegant Women [風雅女史傳] (Fūga joshiden). The sign on the torii (Shinto shrine gates) reads: Mountain king shrine [山王宮] – it is the Sannō Shrine at the Nagata Riding Grounds in Edo. A print with these gates is at MFA (Boston) # 21.9853.
Other prints from the same series in this collection:
SVJP-0343.2021 — Tamagiku:
SVJP-0400.2023 — Saiko:
Note: Special thanks to Horst Graebner, who helped decipher and understand the meaning.
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A young woman playing a four-string musical instrument with a bow (kokyū). Series: Assortments of Beauties Accomplishments [美人芸盡] (Bijin gei-zukushi). Utagawa Kunisada [歌川 国貞]; a.k.a. Utagawa Toyokuni III [三代歌川豊国] (Japanese, 1786 – 1865). Signed: Kochoro Kunisada ga [香蝶楼 国貞画] in a red double gourd cartouche. Publisher: Ibaya Kyūbei [伊場屋久兵衛] (Japanese, 1804 – 1851); seal: Hanmoto, Kyū [板元久] (Marks 19-040 | 126e) Date seal: Bunsei 12 (1829). Censors' seal: Kiwame. Size: Fan print (uchiwa-e).
