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Ukiyo-e art flourished in Japan during the Edo period from the 17th to 19th centuries, and took as its primary subjects courtesans, kabuki actors, geisha and others associated with the "floating world" lifestyle of the pleasure districts. Alongside paintings, mass-produced woodblock prints were a major form of the genre. [1]
Ukiyo-e [a] (浮世絵) is a genre of Japanese art that flourished from the 17th through 19th centuries. Its artists produced woodblock prints and paintings of such subjects as female beauties; kabuki actors and sumo wrestlers; scenes from history and folk tales; travel scenes and landscapes; flora and fauna; and erotica.
As art historian J. Hillier notes, "Kunisada's career tells the tragedy of the downfall of ukiyo-e. With evident talent and tremendous verve, his early prints have qualities that link him with the great days of the school, but the great mass of his prints are hastily designed, over-coloured and badly printed."
Among his students were the famous ukiyo-e artists Shunchō, Shun'ei, and Hokusai. Most of Shunshō's actor prints are in the hoso-e (33 × 15 centimetres (13.0 × 5.9 in)) format common at the time, but he created a great number of works in triptych or pentaptych sets. However, what truly set his work apart from that of earlier artists was the ...
Hokusai also changed the subjects of his works, moving away from the images of courtesans and actors that were the traditional subjects of ukiyo-e. Instead, his work became focused on landscapes and images of the daily life of Japanese people from a variety of social levels. This change of subject was a breakthrough in ukiyo-e and in Hokusai's ...
Toyoharu was the first to make the landscape a subject of ukiyo-e art, rather than just a background to figures and events. By the 1780s he had turned primarily to painting. The Utagawa school of art grew to dominate ukiyo-e in the 19th century with artists such as Utamaro, Hiroshige, and Kuniyoshi.
Onnayu [1] (Ladies' Bath), a colored ukiyo-e print by Torii Kiyonaga (1752–1815) depicting a male sansuke (upper left corner) attending on women at a public bathhouse. Ukiyo (浮世, 'floating/fleeting/transient world') is the Japanese term used to describe the urban lifestyle and culture, especially the pleasure-seeking aspects, of Edo period Japan (1600–1867).
Hishikawa Moronobu (Japanese: 菱川 師宣; 1618 – 25 July 1694) [1] was a Japanese artist known for popularizing the ukiyo-e genre of woodblock prints and paintings in the late 17th century. [2] He consolidated the works of scattered Japanese art styles and forged the early development of ukiyo-e.