Word: shunsho
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...night in 1603, when a priestess named Okuni performed in Kyoto dressed as a kabukimono, or dissolute samurai. The shogunate soon barred women from the stage, but male actors embodying the expressive new style developed large followings?and eager customers for their portraits. A lively example is Katsukawa Shunsho's The Actors Ichikawa Danzo III and Onoe Tamizo I, in which the two men portray a courtesan and a samurai with an intensity that literally defies gravity. Other ukiyo-e scenes were drawn from popular literature, especially the tagasode painting theme?literally "Whose sleeves are these?"?a 17th century meditation...
Koryusai, a contemporary of Shunsho, was among the few high-born Ukiyo-e artists. The samurai generally thought printmaking and even print buying beneath their dignity. Famed for his woodcuts of Yoshiwara girls, Koryusai did equally well with more imaginative pictures of birds and animals. His Phoenix Bird (above at right) is notable for its delicacy and restraint, makes elaborate use of embossing, i.e., printing without ink, for plumage...
...major Ukiyo-e artist who vastly preferred the stage to Yoshiwara subjects was Shunsho (1726-1792). His clean, bold woodcuts of single actors in self-induced throes of emotion (left) have earned him a deep if narrow niche in Japanese art. Wrote Novelist James Michener in his recent book on Ukiyo-e: "None followed his particular interpretation of art more honestly than he, and few men in any field have ever attained so close to one hundred percent of their capabilities...
...collection consists in part of a representative group of primitives, some very fine examples by Harunobu, and is unusually strong in actor prints by such masters as Shunsho, Buncho, and Shungei. There are also about a dozen portraits by Shiriau, as well as a large group of Surimono, (small prints for special occasions) by Hokusai, Hiroshige, Toyokuni, Utamaro, and others...
...first part of the new additions, however, consists of a few examples of the collection of Japanese prints presented to the museum by Henry Osborne Taylor '78. The majority of them are by Shunsho and Hiroshige, the great print artists. Two of them, by Hiroshige, are especially worthy of note. They are long and thin, well adapted to the scenes they portray. The green and purple shading is some of the finest color works to be found in the Museum...