was a Japanese artist best known for his prints in the

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 of such subjects as female beauties; kabuki actors and sumo wrestlers; scenes from history and folk t ...

style as a member of the

Utagawa school The Utagawa school () was one of the main schools of ukiyo-e, founded by Utagawa Toyoharu. It was the largest ukiyo-e school of its period. The main styles were bijin-ga (beautiful women) and uki-e (perspective picture). His pupil, Toyokuni I, too ...

Life and career

Few details are known of Kuniyasu's life. He was born in 1794 and had the given name Yasugorō. His teacher was the

master Toyokuni. Kuniyasu's earliest surviving work is his illustrations to the book ' (). He illustrated about a hundred books throughout his career, and designed hundreds of stand-alone prints of beauties (''

bijin-ga is a generic term for pictures of beautiful women () in Japanese art, especially in woodblock printing of the ukiyo-e genre. Definition defines as a picture that simply "emphasizes the beauty of women", and the ''Shincho Encyclopedia o ...

'') and actors (''

yakusha-e ''Yakusha-e'' (役者絵), often referred to as "actor prints" in English, are Japanese woodblock prints or, rarely, paintings, of kabuki actors, particularly those done in the '' ukiyo-e'' style popular through the Edo period (1603–1867) an ...

''). Kuniyasu also used the art names Ippōsai and Nishikawa Yasunobu. He died at age 39 in the seventh month of 1832. Works of his continued to be issued following his death, which may suggest they were popular. His work is held in the permanent collections of several museums worldwide, including 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 ...

, the

Victoria and Albert Museum The Victoria and Albert Museum (often abbreviated as the V&A) in London is the world's largest museum of applied arts, decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 2.27 million objects. It was founded in 1852 and nam ...

, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the

Weatherspoon Art Museum The Weatherspoon Art Museum is located at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and is one of the largest collections of modern and contemporary art in the southeast with a focus on American art. Its programming includes fifteen or more ...

, 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

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

Van Gogh Museum The Van Gogh Museum () is a Dutch art museum dedicated to the works of Vincent van Gogh and his contemporaries in the Museum Square in Amsterdam South, close to the Stedelijk Museum, the Rijksmuseum, and the Concertgebouw. The museum opene ...

, the Cooper Hewitt, 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 ...

. File:Crowds at Ryogoku LACMA M.2006.136.295a-c.jpg, ''Crowds at Ryōgoku'', File:Keisei Suikoden part2 vols1-2 Utagawa Kuniyasu 1826.jpg, From ''Keisei Suikoden'', 1826 File:Utagawa Kuniyasu, The Harbor of Love() On the Island of Women (Koi no minato nyôgo no shimada), 1830.jpg, ''The Harbor of Love On the Island of Women'', 1830 File:Nihonbashi-Fish-Market-Prosperity-Ukiyoe-Utagawa-Kuniyasu.png, Nihonbashi Fish Market Prosperity File:Kuniyasu - Igagoe Vendetta.jpg,

Igagoe vendetta The Igagoe vendetta was a vengeance incident in Japan in 1634, where the murder of a retainer was avenged by his older brother. The event happened in the town of Iga-Ueno near Iga Pass. The vendetta is known as one of the three major vendetta inc ...

, c.1815-1820

References

Works cited

External links

*
Kuniyasu prints
at ukiyo-e.org 1794 births 1832 deaths Utagawa school Ukiyo-e artists 19th-century Japanese artists {{Japan-artist-stub