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See also: Japanese designers of colour-prints, was See also: born at Kawayoye
.
His See also: father was a well-known painter of the See also: Kano School, Toriyama Sekiyen (Toyofusa), a pupil of Kano Chikanobu; and See also: Utamaro traced his descent from the old feudal clans of the Minamoto, whose war with the Taira See also: family belongs to the romantic See also: period of Japanese See also: history
.
Utamaro's See also: personal name was Yusuke; and he first worked under the signature Toriyama Toyo-aki; but after a See also: quarrel with his father substituted the name Kitagawa for the former appellation
.
His distinct See also: style was the outcome of that of his father, tempered with the characteristics of the Kano school
.
As a painter, his landscapes and drawings of See also: insects are most highly considered by Japanese critics; but his fame will always rest among Europeans on his designs for colour-prints, the subjects of which are almost entirely women—professional beauties and the like
.
These were done for the most See also: part while he lived, in a sort of bondage, in the See also: house of a publisher, Tsutaya Shigesaburo
.
His talents were wasted by an unbroken career of dissipation, culminating in a See also: term of imprisonment for a pictorial See also: libel on the shogun Iyenari, in 1804
.
From this he never recovered, and died on the third See also: day of the fifth See also: month, 18o6
.
The colour-prints of Utamaro are distinguished by an extreme See also: grace of See also: line and of colour
.
His composition is superb; and even in his lifetimehe achieved such popularity among his contemporaries as to gain the title Ukiyo-ye Chuko-no-so, " See also: great master of the Popular School." His See also: work has a considerable reputation with the Dutch who visited See also: Nagasaki, and was imported into See also: Europe before the end of the 18th century
.
His See also: book illustrations are also of great beauty
.
Three portraits of him are known: two colour-prints by himself, and one See also: painting by Chobunsai Yeishi (in the collection of Mr Arthur Morrison)
.
His prints were frequently copied by his contemporaries, especially by the first Toyokuni and by Shunsen; and many of those bearing his name are really the work of Koikawa Harumachi, who had been a See also: fellow-student, and afterwards married his widow
.
That artist is known by the name of Utamaro II
.
Most of these imitations were made between 18o8 and 182o
.
Utamaro II., who afterwards changed his name to Kitagawa Tetsugoro, died between 183o and 1843
.
See E. de See also: Goncourt, Outamaro (1891); E
.
F
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See also: Strange, Japanese See also: Illustration (1897) ; and Japanese Colour-Prints (See also: Victoria and See also: Albert Museum Handbook, 1904)
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