Torii Kiyonobu II ( ja, 二代目 鳥居 清信 ''Nidaime Torii Kiyonobu''; active 1725–1760) was a 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 ...
artist. He headed the
Torii artistic school from possibly as early as 1725, when its founder
Torii Kiyonobu I
Torii Kiyonobu I ( ja, 鳥居 清信; – 22 August 1729) was a Japanese painter and printmaker in the ukiyo-e style, who is renowned for his work on kabuki signboards and related materials. Along with his father Torii Kiyomot ...
retired. Kiyonobu II was a prolific designer of
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 ...
, principally in the narrow ''
hosoban
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 ...
'' format, of which he produced at least 300 examples for about 20 different publishers. He and
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 ...
were the main Torii artists of their time and have been rumoured to be the same person. Kiyonobu II's last known work is an actor print dated to 1760.
References
Works cited
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External links
Ukiyo-e Prints by Torii Kiyonobu II*
18th-century Japanese artists
Torii school
Ukiyo-e artists
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