Lot 232G
19th C. Toyohara Kunichika Kabuki Triptych
19th C. Toyohara Kunichika Kabuki Triptych
Starting Bid: $250
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Toyohara Kunichika (Japanese, 1835-1900). "Princess Yaegaki and Takeda Katsuyori," from a scene in "Honcho Nijushi-ko" (Twenty-Four Paragons of Filial Piety in Our Country), woodblock print triptych, ink and color on paper, ca. 1878 to 1888. Signed lower right of the center sheet with the artist's red seal.
A kabuki triptych in three woodblock sheets depicting the celebrated "Kitsunebi" (Fox Fire) scene from the play "Honcho Nijushi-ko," Chikamatsu Hanji's 1766 puppet drama adapted into the kabuki repertoire and beloved for over two centuries. The center and right sheets are dominated by Princess Yaegaki, played by Ichikawa Danjuro IX in onnagata costume, crossing a wooden bridge in a robe of crimson silk patterned with chrysanthemums and peonies in jade and gold. She lifts the Suwa Hosshono Kabuto, the horned and white-tasseled war helmet that is the sacred treasure of the Takeda clan, while the red torii of Suwa Shrine glows on the far shore beneath bare plum branches just beginning to flower. On the left sheet, her lover Takeda Katsuyori, played by Nakamura Fukusuke IV, sits in a balustraded gallery in a robe of lattice and ivy, sword in hand, gazing into the distance as plum blossoms drift overhead. Size: (folded): 9.3" W x 14.8" H (23.6 cm W x 37.6 cm H); (open):28.3" W x 14.8" H (71.9 cm W x 37.6 cm H).
The narrative behind the image is among the most cherished in the kabuki canon. Yaegaki, daughter of the warlord Nagao Kenshin, has long mourned her fiance Katsuyori, believed dead. When a young retainer appears at her father's house, she recognizes in him the living likeness of her beloved. To save him she must deliver the Suwa helmet, a Takeda heirloom her father has appropriated, across the frozen waters of Lake Suwa. The spirit foxes of the Suwa Myojin shrine, drawn to the helmet's sacred presence, lend her their power, and the princess crosses the ice as if borne on flame. Kunichika stages the moment of decision, the helmet raised, the lover sighted, the crossing imminent, all of it suspended in the silvered blue of a midwinter sky.
Kunichika worked at the seam between two epochs, the last great practitioner of the Utagawa actor portrait before photography and photomechanical printing displaced the woodblock entirely. His palette here is unmistakable: the bold aniline reds and deep purples imported from Germany during the Meiji period, the saturated blues of the river, the carefully patterned brocades that betray hours of careful registration across multiple blocks. The print belongs to a generation of kabuki imagery that served as both advertisement and souvenir, hung in tea shops and private rooms as a record of the performance, and prized today as the final flowering of an art form that had defined Edo for two and a half centuries.
Signed lower right of the center sheet "Toyohara Kunichika hitsu" ("from the brush of Toyohara Kunichika") with the artist's red Toshidama seal of the Utagawa school. Role and actor cartouche upper right of center sheet reads "Yaegaki-hime, Ichikawa Danjuro." Role and actor cartouche upper right of left sheet reads "Takeda Katsuyori, Nakamura Fukusuke." Publisher's cartouche lower left of left sheet bears a Meiji-period printing date and Tokyo publisher address, partially obscured.
About the artist: Toyohara Kunichika (1835-1900) was born Oshima Yasohachi in the Kyobashi district of Edo. Apprenticed early to a dry goods shop and a lampshade maker, he began studying with Toyohara Chikanobu around age twelve and was accepted the following year into the studio of Utagawa Kunisada, the dominant printmaker of the mid-nineteenth century. His professional name was a deliberate composite of both teachers'.
His specialty was yakusha-e, woodblock portraits of kabuki actors, pursued with an intensity bordering on obsession. A backstage regular known for sketching in concentrated silence, he produced "big head" close-up portraits that became among the most recognized images of his generation. Contemporary press consistently ranked him beside Yoshitoshi and Yoshiiku, and in 1867 the Tokugawa government commissioned him to contribute ten works to the World Exhibition in Paris.
His transition into the Meiji period (1868-1912) was smoother than most of his peers managed. While photography and photoengraving displaced the commercial footing of many ukiyo-e artists, Kunichika adapted, incorporating Western vanishing-point perspective and experimenting with the bold aniline reds and deep purples newly imported from Germany. His personal life was less composed: chronically in debt, a heavy drinker, and a known frequenter of the Yoshiwara, he died in 1900 not long after the death of his daughter Hana in childbirth. His grave poem announced his intention to paint portraits of the King of Hell and his devils, a suitably defiant exit for a man who had spent sixty-five years in the theater. He is now recognized as one of the last significant masters of the woodblock tradition he inherited from Kunisada, and the most important chronicler of kabuki in the Meiji era.
Provenance: private Las Vegas, Nevada, USA collection
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Item #
195215
- Condition: Fair. Far left panel is detached from other two. Some tattering, chips, tears, small losses, and piercings to edges. Areas of creasing and discoloring. Otherwise, imagery is still very clear with good pigments and detail.
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