Torii Kiyonaga
Encyclopedia
Naito Kiyonaga
' was a Japanese samurai of the Sengoku period, who served the Matsudaira clan of Mikawa Province....
and Koriki Kiyonaga
Koriki Kiyonaga
was a Japanese daimyo during the Azuchi-Momoyama period and Edo periods. A native of Mikawa Province, Kiyonaga served the Tokugawa clan during its battles, until 1600....
.
was a Japanese ukiyo-e
Ukiyo-e
' is a genre of Japanese woodblock prints and paintings produced between the 17th and the 20th centuries, featuring motifs of landscapes, tales from history, the theatre, and pleasure quarters...
printmaker and painter of the Torii school
Torii school
This article is about a school of ukiyo-e art; for the sculpture style, see Tori style. For the Torii samurai clan, see Torii family.The Torii school was a school of ukiyo-e painting and printing founded in Edo...
. Originally Sekiguchi Shinsuke, the son of an Edo
Edo
, also romanized as Yedo or Yeddo, is the former name of the Japanese capital Tokyo, and was the seat of power for the Tokugawa shogunate which ruled Japan from 1603 to 1868...
bookseller, he took on Torii Kiyonaga as an art-name
Art-name
An art-name is a pseudonym, or penname, used by an East Asian artist, which they sometimes change. The word and the idea to use a pseudonym originated from China, then became popular in other East Asian countries ....
(gō). Although not biologically related to the Torii family, he became head of the group after the death of his adoptive father and teacher Torii Kiyomitsu
Torii Kiyomitsu
was a painter and printmaker of the Torii school of Japanese ukiyo-e art; the son of Torii Kiyonobu II or Torii Kiyomasu II, he was the third head of the school, and was originally called Kamejirō before taking the gō Kiyomitsu...
.
The master Kiyomitsu died in 1785; since his son died young, and Kiyotsune, Kiyonaga's senior, was a less promising artist, Kiyonaga was the obvious choice to succeed Kiyomitsu to leadership of the Torii school. However, he delayed this for two years, likely devoting time to his bijinga and realizing the immense responsibility that would fall on his shoulders once he took over the school. Thus, in 1787, he began organizing the production of kabuki
Kabuki
is classical Japanese dance-drama. Kabuki theatre is known for the stylization of its drama and for the elaborate make-up worn by some of its performers.The individual kanji characters, from left to right, mean sing , dance , and skill...
signboards and the like, which the school held a near monopoly on. He also began to train Kiyomitsu's grandson, Torii Kiyomine, who was to succeed him.
Artistic career
Nishiki-e
refers to Japanese multi-colored woodblock printing; this technique is used primarily in ukiyo-e. It was invented in the 1760s, and perfected and popularized by the printmaker Suzuki Harunobu, who produced a great many nishiki-e prints between 1765 and his death five years later.Previously, most...
) and of bijinga
Bijinga
Bijinga , is a generic term for pictures of beautiful women in Japanese art, especially in woodblock printing of the ukiyo-e genre, which predate photography...
, images of courtesans and other beautiful women. Like most ukiyo-e artists, however, he also produced a number of prints and paintings depicting Kabuki actors and related subjects, many of them promotional materials for the theaters. He also produced a number of shunga
Shunga
' is a Japanese term for erotic art. Most shunga are a type of ukiyo-e, usually executed in woodblock print format. While rare, there are extant erotic painted handscrolls which predate the Ukiyo-e movement...
, or erotic images.
In the field of bijinga, only the works of Suzuki Harunobu
Suzuki Harunobu
was a Japanese woodblock print artist, one of the most famous in the Ukiyo-e style. He was an innovator, the first to produce full-color prints in 1765, rendering obsolete the former modes of two- and three-color prints. Harunobu used many special techniques, and depicted a wide variety of...
and a handful of others are generally regarded comparable with those of Kiyonaga. Kiyonaga produced a great many bijinga prints in the 1780s, and this is generally regarded as his high point; this is particularly true because he nearly stopped doing art entirely in the early 1790s. Some scholars point out the beauty of his paintings as being particularly exceptional given his commoner heritage and upbringing. Adopted into the Torii family, Kiyonaga's biological father was the owner of a number of tenements near a fish market; though his family may not have been particularly poor, he was certainly not brought up in an environment of high culture. Meanwhile, contemporary artists of the samurai class, who would be expected to have a better innate sense of the aesthetics and details of aristocratic culture, produced images quite arguably inferior to those of Kiyonaga.
The women in Kiyonaga's prints are often described as seeming fuller and more mature than those of his predecessor Harunobu, whose prints often depict women who seem younger and thinner. Though a difference of personal styles accounts for this primarily, it also comes in part from Kiyonaga's use of larger sheets of paper (oban, rather than chuban or hosoban). Also, a great proportion of Kiyonaga's work is in diptych
Polyptych
A polyptych generally refers to a painting which is divided into sections, or panels. The terminology that follows is in relevance to the number of panels integrated into a particular piece of work: "diptych" describes a two-part work of art; "triptych" describes a three-part work; "tetraptych"...
or triptych form, making the work seem larger and more impressive overall.
Just as Kiyonaga can be said to have replaced the earlier Harunobu as the most popular bijinga artist of his time, so Kiyonaga can be said to have been replaced by Utamaro
Utamaro
was a Japanese printmaker and painter, who is considered one of the greatest artists of woodblock prints . His name was romanized as Outamaro. He is known especially for his masterfully composed studies of women, known as bijinga...
, whose women are even fuller and mature than those of the former.
Kiyonaga's Kabuki prints, depicting scenes on stage and the like, show a great attention to detail, and seek to depict real Kabuki scenes, rather than idealized versions. There is something very plain about much of his depictions, showing that those depicted are in fact actors and not the true idealized characters they represent; however, he did not make the leap to portraying the individual features and personalities of the actors as some other artists (including the Katsukawa school
Katsukawa school
The Katsukawa school was a school of Japanese ukiyo-e art, founded by Miyagawa Shunsui. It specialized in paintings and prints of kabuki actors , sumo wrestlers, and beautiful women ....
) did. Some scholars label his style as an important intermediary step leading to the bombastic, yet realistic, style of Sharaku
Sharaku
is widely considered to be one of the great masters of the woodblock printing in Japan. Little is known of him, besides his ukiyo-e prints; neither his true name nor the dates of his birth or death are known with any certainty...
.
In Philately
Kiyonaga’s works have been featured several times in commemorative postage stamps issued by the Japanese post office:- 1958 Philatelic Week
- 1982 Philatelic Week (se-tenant pair)
- 2003 Commemorative issue of the 250th anniversary of Kiyonaga’s birth