was a Japanese designer of
ukiyo-e
is a genre of Japanese art that flourished from the 17th through 19th centuries. Its artists produced woodblock printing, woodblock prints and Nikuhitsu-ga, paintings of such subjects as female beauties; kabuki actors and sumo wrestlers; scenes ...
style
Japanese woodblock prints, who was active from about 1783 to about 1795.
Although a student of
Katsukawa Shunshō
Shunshō Katsukawa (; 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 Miyagawa Chōshun, bo ...
, Shunchō's output, which consists mostly of prints of beautiful women, more closely resembles the work of
Torii Kiyonaga
Torii Kiyonaga (; 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 an art name. Altho ...
.
[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 Woodcut, woodblock print format. While rare, there are also extant erotic painted handscrolls which predate ukiyo-e. Translated literally, the Japanese word '' ...
prints, which also resemble those of
Torii Kiyonaga
Torii Kiyonaga (; 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 an art name. Altho ...
.
His work is held in the permanent collections of many museums worldwide, including the
British Museum
The British Museum is a Museum, public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is the largest in the world. It documents the story of human cu ...
, the
Portland Art Museum
The Portland Art Museum (PAM) is an art museum in downtown Portland, Oregon, United States. The Portland Art Museum has 240,000 square feet (22,000 m2), with more than 112,000 square feet (10,400 m2) of gallery space. The museum’s permanent c ...
, the
University of Michigan Museum of Art
The University of Michigan Museum of Art (UMMA) is one of the largest university art museums in the United States, located in Ann Arbor, Michigan, with . Built as a war memorial in 1909 for the university's fallen alumni from the Civil War, Alu ...
, the
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art
The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art is an art gallery, art museum in Kansas City, Missouri, Kansas City, Missouri, known for its encyclopedic collection of art from nearly every continent and culture, and especially for its extensive collection of A ...
, the
Reading Public Museum, 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 List of largest art museums, largest ar ...
, the
Mead Art Museum at Amherst College, the
Hyde Collection, the
MOA Museum of Art, 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, the Garden at Newfields and more. It is located at the corner of No ...
, the
Brooklyn Museum
The Brooklyn Museum is an art museum in the New York City borough (New York City), borough of Brooklyn. At , the museum is New York City's second largest and contains an art collection with around 500,000 objects. Located near the Prospect Heig ...
, 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. The museum houses more than 3,000 cultural ob ...
, and the
Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, colloquially referred to as the Met, is an Encyclopedic museum, encyclopedic art museum in New York City. By floor area, it is the List of largest museums, third-largest museum in the world and the List of larg ...
.
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 on paper. Each page or image is creat ...
by Katsukawa Shunchō titled “Viewing Flowers in Four Seasons” (''Shiki no hanami'')
File:Courtesans by Shunchō .jpg, Courtesan
A courtesan is a prostitute with a courtly, wealthy, or upper-class clientele. Historically, the term referred to a courtier, a person who attended the court of a monarch or other powerful person.
History
In European feudal society, the co ...
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 Shim ...
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