Typical signatures of Katsukawa Shuncho reading 'Shuncho' and 'Shuncho ga'

was a Japanese designer of

ukiyo-e Ukiyo-e is a genre of Japanese art which flourished from the 17th through 19th centuries. Its artists produced woodblock prints and paintings Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surfac ...

style

Japanese woodblock prints Woodblock printing in Japan (, ''mokuhanga'') is a technique best known for its use in the ''ukiyo-e'' artistic genre of single sheets, but it was also used for printing books in the same period. Widely adopted in Japan during the Edo period (160 ...

, who was active from about 1783 to about 1795. Although a student of

Katsukawa Shunshō Shunshō Katsukawa ( ja, 勝川春章; 1726 – 19 January 1793) was a Japanese painter and printmaker in the ''ukiyo-e'' style, and the leading artist of the Katsukawa school. Shunshō studied under Miyagawa Shunsui, son and student of Miy ...

, Shunchō's output, which consists mostly of prints of beautiful women, more closely resembles the work of

Torii Kiyonaga Torii Kiyonaga ( ja, 鳥居清長; 1752 – June 28, 1815) was a Japanese ukiyo-e artist of the Torii school. Originally Sekiguchi Shinsuke, the son of an Edo bookseller, from Motozaimokuchō Itchōme in Edo, he took on Torii Kiyonaga as a ...

.Newland, Amy Reigle. (2005). ''Hotei Encyclopedia of Japanese Woodblock Prints,'' p. 456. Shunchō also designed many

shunga is a type of Japanese erotic art typically executed as a kind of ukiyo-e, often in woodblock print format. While rare, there are also extant erotic painted handscrolls which predate ukiyo-e. Translated literally, the Japanese word ''shunga' ...

prints, which also resemble those of

. His work is held in the permanent collections of many museums worldwide, including the

British Museum The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...

, the

Portland Art Museum The Portland Art Museum in Portland, Oregon, United States, was founded in 1892, making it one of the oldest art museums on the West Coast and seventh oldest in the US. Upon completion of the most recent renovations, the Portland Art Museum becam ...

, the

University of Michigan Museum of Art The University of Michigan Museum of Art in Ann Arbor, Michigan with is one of the largest university art museums in the United States. Built as a war memorial in 1909 for the university's fallen alumni from the Civil War, Alumni Memorial Hall ori ...

, the

Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art is an art museum in Kansas City, Missouri, known for its encyclopedic collection of art from nearly every continent and culture, and especially for its extensive collection of Asian art. In 2007, ''Time'' magaz ...

, the

Reading Public Museum The Reading Public Museum is a museum in West Reading, Pennsylvania. The museum's permanent collection mainly focuses on art, science, and civilization. It also has a planetarium and a arboretum. Collection The museum's art collection cont ...

, the Gregory Allicar Museum of Art, the

Harvard Art Museums The Harvard Art Museums are part of Harvard University and comprise three museums: the Fogg Museum (established in 1895), the Busch-Reisinger Museum (established in 1903), and the Arthur M. Sackler Museum (established in 1985), and four research ...

, the

Minneapolis Institute of Art The Minneapolis Institute of Art (Mia) is an arts museum located in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. Home to more than 90,000 works of art representing 5,000 years of world history, Mia is one of the largest art museums in the United State ...

, the Mead Art Museum at Amherst College, the Hyde Collection, the

MOA Museum of Art The is a private museum in the city of Atami, Japan. History The museum was established in 1982 by the Mokichi Okada Association (MOA) to house the art collection of their founder, multimillionaire and religious leader Mokichi Okada (1882– ...

, the

Indianapolis Museum of Art The Indianapolis Museum of Art (IMA) is an encyclopedic art museum located at Newfields, a campus that also houses Lilly House, The Virginia B. Fairbanks Art & Nature Park: 100 Acres, the Gardens at Newfields, the Beer Garden, and more. It i ...

, the

Brooklyn Museum The Brooklyn Museum is an art museum located in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. At , the museum is New York City's second largest and contains an art collection with around 1.5 million objects. Located near the Prospect Heights, Crown H ...

, the

Suntory Museum of Art The is an arts museum located in Tokyo Midtown, Roppongi, Tokyo. It is owned by the Suntory corporation. The collection theme of the art works is "Art in life" and they mainly have Japanese antiques. History In 1961, Suntory President Keizo ...

, and the

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...

Gallery

File:Shuncho - Viewing Flowers in Four Seasons (Shiki no Hanami), Beauties viewing cherry blossoms.jpg,

Woodblock print Woodblock printing or block printing is a technique for printing text, images or patterns used widely throughout East Asia and originating in China in antiquity as a method of printing on textiles and later paper. Each page or image is create ...

by Katsukawa Shunchō titled “Viewing Flowers in Four Seasons” (''Shiki no hanami'') File:Courtesans by Shunchō .jpg,

Courtesan Courtesan, in modern usage, is a euphemism for a "kept" mistress (lover), mistress or prostitute, particularly one with wealthy, powerful, or influential clients. The term historically referred to a courtier, a person who attended the Royal cour ...

s in front of the Great Gate (Ōmon) of the Shin-

Yoshiwara was a famous (red-light district) in Edo, present-day Tokyo, Japan. Established in 1617, Yoshiwara was one of three licensed and well-known red-light districts created during the early 17th century by the Tokugawa shogunate, alongside Shima ...

pleasure district, 1780s.

Notes

References

* Hayashi, Yoshikazu, ''Kiyonaga to Shunchō'', Tokyo, Yuko Shobo, 1976, 135–6. * Keyes, Roger S. & Keiko Mizushima, ''The Theatrical World of Osaka Prints'', Philadelphia, Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1973, 275. * Lane, Richard. (1978). ''Images from the Floating World, The Japanese Print.'' Oxford: Oxford University Press.
OCLC 5246796
* Newland, Amy Reigle. (2005). ''Hotei Encyclopedia of Japanese Woodblock Prints.'' Amsterdam: Hotei.
OCLC 61666175

External links

Bridge of dreams: the Mary Griggs Burke collection of Japanese art
a catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art Libraries (fully available online as PDF), which contains material on Katsukawa Shunchō (see index) 18th-century Japanese artists Katsukawa school Ukiyo-e artists Year of birth unknown Year of death unknown 18th-century printmakers {{Printmaker-stub