UTAMARO / GOYO - HAIRDRESSER - 1917

Subject: Early 20th Century Woodblock Print. Japanese Art. Ukiyo-e. Goyo Hashiguchi.

Publication: Tokyo, 1917 - 1918.

Technique: Woodblock print, the drawing is created by inking wooden plates. With the seal of Hashiguchi Goyo's workshop in the lower left corner.

Measurements: 28.5 x 19.5 cm.

Description: Engraving made in the workshops of the renowned artist Hashiguchi Goyo, who collected engravings from the best artists from 1596 to 1896, including Utamaro, Sharaku, Toyokuni, Harunobu, Koryusai, Hiroshige, Hokusai, etc.

Goyo Hashiguchi (1880 - 1921) was a Japanese artist. Hashiguchi Kiyoshi was born in Kagoshima Prefecture. His father, Hashiguchi Kanemizu, was a samurai and amateur painter in the Shijō style. His father hired a Kano style painting master in 1899, when Kiyoshi was only ten years old. Kiyoshi took the name Goyō while attending the Tokyo School of Fine Arts, where he graduated in 1905.

Author's Biography: Kitagawa Utamaro (1753-1806) was a Japanese painter and printmaker, considered one of the most well-known and valued Japanese painters in the West, and a prominent representative of the Ukiyo-e movement that dominated Japanese art from the 17th to the 19th centuries. He trained in Edo, now Tokyo, with Toriyama Sekien, an artist of the Kano school. He gained fame in 1788 with two albums of woodblock prints. However, he is especially valued for the most characteristic type of prints in the ukiyo-e style: those depicting scenes of theater, actors, and prostitutes from the famous Yoshiwara, the pleasure district of Tokyo. His depictions of beautiful women, almost always half-bust, have immortalized his name. These are not realistic portraits but idealized, ethereal representations, executed with flat colors and very expressive drawing.

Conservation: Good condition. Mounted on acid-free and pH-neutral museum-quality passepartout.

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