Kitagawa Utamaro

Kita­gawa UTAMARO (around 1753 / 54–1806) did an appren­tice­ship with Toriya­ma Sekien (1712–1788). Uta­maro is con­sid­ered the most impor­tant painter of the ukiyo‑e ‑Art (pic­tures of the flow­ing world). After Torii Kiy­on­a­ga (1752–1815) Uta­maro became the lead­ing one ukiyo‑e ‑Mas­ter.
In the begin­ning Uta­maro illus­trat­ed poems and plays ( kabu­ki Pieces), lat­er por­traits of actors fol­lowed. From 1780 he devot­ed him­self to depict­ing beau­ti­ful women. Out­stand­ing are his por­tray­als of famous cour­te­sans from the Freuden­vier­tel ( Yoshi­wara ). Char­ac­ter­is­tic of his style is a grace­ful, extreme­ly slen­der and ele­gant type of woman with falling robes.
The refined pic­ture com­po­si­tions and the vir­tu­oso han­dling of the tech­nol­o­gy, com­bi­na­tion of dif­fer­ent print­ing process­es, char­ac­ter­ize the high qual­i­ty of his works. Cour­te­sans and lovers were among his favorite sub­jects. No oth­er artist of his time devot­ed him­self so con­sis­tent­ly to the rep­re­sen­ta­tion of beau­ti­ful women ( bijin-ga ). In addi­tion to his numer­ous erot­ic book illus­tra­tions, Uta­maro designed albums, includ­ing nat­ur­al his­to­ry books with insects, shells, plants, birds and land­scapes, and left out­stand­ing paintings.