Utagawa Sadahide

, also known as Gountei Sadahide (), was a Japanese artist best known for his prints in the ukiyo-e style as a member of the Utagawa school. His prints covered a wide variety of genres; amongst his best known are his ''Yokohama-e'' pictures of foreigners in Yokohama in the 1860s, a period when he was a best-selling artist. He was a member of the Tokugawa shogunate's delegation to the International Exposition of 1867 in Paris.

Life and career

Sadahide was born Hashimoto Kenjirō () in 1807 in Fusa Province (modern Chiba Prefecture) in Shimōsa. He joined Utagawa school master Kunisada's studio in the 1820s and become one of the master's most prominent students. As a member of the school, he took on Utagawa as a surname, and also used the surname Gountei as an art name, and also used his birth surname as an art name late in his career. In addition, when Utagawa Kunisada succeeded to the art name of Utagawa Toyokuni , his students followed suit and changed "Sada (貞)" to "Kuni (国)", but Sadahide did not change his art name.

Sadahide's earliest known works are the illustrations for a book ' (', 1824), the first of many books he was to illustrate throughout his career. In 1828 three years after the death of Utagawa Toyokuni, Utagawa Kunisada built a stone monument in Myokendo (妙見堂), on which the names of his students were inscribed, and Sadahide was the fourth name on the monument at the age of only 21. Most of his early works were ''bijin-ga'' portraits of beauties. In the 1830s and 1840s he broadened his output to landscapes and ''musha-e'' warrior prints. In particular, he excelled at painting bird's eye view of landscapes based on his research by actually walking around the land.

In the 1850s Sadahide began to become known for his prints of exotic locales. In he produced the five-volume ''Kaigai Shinwa'' (, ''New Overseas Stories'') about the First Opium War in China, and in 1855 he produced the four-volume ' (, ''Northern Japan Illustrated''), which depicted the Ainu people in Ezo, the name at the time for the northernmost parts of Japan. This interest expanded to maps: he produces prints of maps of Edo, Yokohama, Japan, and the world—this last quite accurate and likely modeled after a Dutch example. His largest map was a nine-sheet panorama of Yokohama with a breadth of two metres.

In the 1859 to 1862 Sadahide produced a large number of ''Yokohama-e'' prints of foreigners and the goods they brought to Japan after the country ended its self-imposed isolation in 1854. Among these prints was the series ', (', ''Foreigners Viewing Famous Places in Edo''). While there is scant evidence of the reception of these works, the number of extant copies suggests they were popular, and they appear to depict foreigners in a positive light. Several prints depict pleasant interactions between foreigner and Japanese figures, such as dining together or playing badminton. This in contrast to the philosophy of ' ("revere the Emperor, expel the barbarians") that had gained currency since the Convention of Kanagawa of 1854.

Sadahide also produced guidebooks to Yokohama, include one of five volumes in 1862–66 called ' (, ''Things seen and heard at the Yokohama open port''). He details the eating habits and technology of Yokohama's foreign residents, and suggests the Japanese would do well to learn from the West with such statements as: "We are by nature emotional and want a quick profit, but nowadays the Japanese merchants in Yokohama are trying hard to follow the Western model of remaining calm." While these works emphasize contrasts between the Japanese and foreigners, they also dispel myths: Sadahide notes that not all foreigners are tall or have long noses, despite the stereotypes.

The artist continued to make prints after moving to Nagasaki. There Sadahide made a panorama that was long and produced books on the history and geography of Western lands. He joined ten other artists as part of a delegation the Tokugawa shogunate sent to the International Exposition of 1867 in Paris, where ten of his Edo views were exhibited. The following year, it was reported he ranked the best-selling ukiyo-e artist. Sadahide died in 1878 or 1879, shortly after producing a print of Yokohama the size of a ''tatami'' mat in 1871 entitled "Yokohama yokuran no shinkei". The first exhibition dedicated to Sadahide's work was held in 1997, subtitled ''The ukiyo-e artist who flies in the sky'' ( ').

His work is held in several museums worldwide, including the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, the Minneapolis Institute of Art, the Dallas Museum of Art, the Five Colleges and Historic Deerfield Museum Consortium, the Arizona State University Art Museum, the Honolulu Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the British Museum, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Van Gogh Museum, the National Museum of New Zealand, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Saint Louis Art Museum, the Indianapolis Museum of Art, the University of Michigan Museum of Art, the Suntory Museum of Art, the Carnegie Museum of Art, the Harvard Art Museums, and the National Museum of Korea.

Amerikaan op een uitje-Rijksmuseum NG-663-4.jpeg, ''American on an Outing'', 1861
Chinese men in Yokohama.JPG, ''Chinese Men in Yokohama'',
Lord Yoritomo Traveling to Kyoto in the First Year of Kenkyu Period (circa 1285) LACMA M.2006.136.297a-c (3 of 3).jpg, Lord Yoritomo Traveling to Kyoto (1), 1862
Lord Yoritomo Traveling to Kyoto in the First Year of Kenkyu Period (circa 1285) LACMA M.2006.136.297a-c (1 of 3).jpg, Lord Yoritomo Traveling to Kyoto (2), 1862
Lord Yoritomo Traveling to Kyoto in the First Year of Kenkyu Period (circa 1285) LACMA M.2006.136.297a-c (2 of 3).jpg, Lord Yoritomo Traveling to Kyoto (3), 1862

References

Works cited

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External links

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Sadahide prints
at ukiyo-e.org

{{DEFAULTSORT:Sadahide
Ukiyo-e artists
1807 births
1870s deaths
19th-century Japanese painters
People from Chiba Prefecture
Japanese printmakers
19th-century printmakers