Utagawa Toyokuni

Utagawa Toyokuni made the kabuki stage come alive in woodblock prints. His actor portraits catch famous players mid performance, in bold costumes and dramatic poses, and fans collected them the way people later collected film stills. He also designed prints of warriors and beautiful women.

He studied under Utagawa Toyoharu in Edo from about the age of fourteen and became the second head of the Utagawa school. Under him it grew into the dominant school of Japanese printmaking in the nineteenth century, and his pupils Kunisada and Kuniyoshi became major artists in their own right. He was very productive, with dozens of print series and hundreds of illustrated books, and he helped develop the diptych and triptych formats that let a single scene run across several sheets.

Look for the strong outlines, flat areas of colour and patterned robes that make these prints read clearly from across a room.