Kiyomitsu - (hosoban) Bandô Hikosaburô II as Shita no Kotaro in 'Katakiuchi Mogami no Inabune'

was a painter and printmaker of the

Torii school A is a traditional Japanese gate most commonly found at the entrance of or within a Shinto shrine, where it symbolically marks the transition from the mundane to the sacred. The presence of a ''torii'' at the entrance is usually the simplest ...

of Japanese ''

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 ...

'' art; the son of

Torii Kiyonobu II Torii Kiyonobu II ( ja, 二代目鳥居清信 ''Nidaime Torii Kiyonobu''; active 1725–1760) was a Japanese ukiyo-e artist. He headed the Torii artistic school from possibly as early as 1725, when its founder Torii Kiyonobu I reti ...

Torii Kiyomasu II was a Japanese ''ukiyo-e'' painter and woodblock printmaker of the Torii school, a specialist, like the rest of the Torii artists, in billboards and other images for the promotion of the kabuki theatres. Scholars are unsure as to Kiyomasu II's ...

, he was the third head of the school, and was originally called Kamejirō before taking the '' gō'' Kiyomitsu. Dividing his work between

actor prints ''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) and in ...

and ''

bijinga 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 of W ...

'' (pictures of beautiful women), he primarily used the ''

benizuri-e are a type of "primitive" ''ukiyo-e'' style Japanese woodblock prints. They were usually printed in pink (''beni'') and green, occasionally with the addition of another color, either printed or added by hand. The production of ''benizuri-e'' re ...

'' technique prolific at the time, which involved using one or two colors of ink on the woodblocks rather than hand-coloring; full-color prints would be introduced later in Kiyomitsu's career, in 1765. Though scholars generally note his

kabuki is a classical form of Japanese dance-drama. Kabuki theatre is known for its heavily-stylised performances, the often-glamorous costumes worn by performers, and for the elaborate make-up worn by some of its performers. Kabuki is thought to ...

prints as lacking originality, they see a grace, beauty, and "dream-like quality" in his prints of young men and women which, at times, rivals that of the work of

Suzuki Harunobu Suzuki Harunobu ( ja, 鈴木春信; ) was a Japanese designer of woodblock print art in the style. He was an innovator, the first to produce full-color prints () in 1765, rendering obsolete the former modes of two- and three-color prints. Haru ...

, who was just beginning his career at this time. Kiyomitsu continued to produce the billboards and other kabuki-related materials which were the domain of the Torii school, and in those works he was quite traditional and retrospective in his style. However, he was more or less the first Torii artist to experiment outside that field, and to truly emerge into the wider mainstream of ''ukiyo-e'' styles, adapting to the use of new techniques and popular subjects. Overall, it is said that the workshop flourished under his direction, but the core "Torii style" was not truly changed or advanced. Two of his greatest pupils were

Torii Kiyotsune Torii Kiyotsune (, ) was a Japanese artist of the Torii school of ukiyo-e art. Kiyotsune's birth and death dates are unknown; his personal name was Daijirō, and is believed to have been son of the publisher Nakajimaya Isaemon (). Kiyotsune' ...

, who faithfully continued the Torii traditions, and

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 ...

, who went on to be a master and innovator in his own right.

References

* Frédéric, Louis (2002). "Japan Encyclopedia". Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. * Hickman, Money (1993). "Enduring Alliance: The Torii Line of Ukiyo-e Artists and Their Work for the Kabuki Theatre". Fenway Court, 1992. Boston: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. * Lane, Richard. (1978). ''Images from the Floating World, The Japanese Print''. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
OCLC 5246796
{{DEFAULTSORT:Torii, Kiyomitsu 1735 births 1785 deaths Ukiyo-e artists Torii school