Utagawa Kuniyoshi at Royal Academy of Arts on artrepublic.com

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The majority of the exhibition is drawn from the outstanding collection of Professor Arthur R. Miller which has recently been donated to the American Friends of the British Museum. This is the first major exhibition in the United Kingdom on Utagawa Kuniyoshi since 1961.

Kuniyoshi was a major master of the ‘floating world’, or Ukiyo-e school of Japanese art, and, together with Katsushika Hokusai (1760 – 1849), Utagawa Hiroshige (1797 – 1858) and Utagawa Kunisada (1786 – 1864), dominated nineteenth century printmaking in Japan. Prolific and multi-talented, Kuniyoshi considerably expanded the existing repertoire of the school, particularly with thousands of designs that vividly brought to life famous military exploits in Japan and China. He portrayed historic heroes of Japan’s warrior past and brigands from the Chinese adventure story The Water Margin giving dramatic pictorial expression to the great myths and legends that had accrued around them. Kuniyoshi’s images of heroes, with which he made his name, constitute the most important part of his artistic output.  However, censorship regulations frequently required him to displace events to a more distant fictionalised past. Kuniyoshi developed an extraordinarily powerful style in his prints, often spreading a scene dynamically across all three sheets of the traditional triptych format and linking the composition with one bold unifying element - a major artistic innovation. 

Kuniyoshi was also very active in the other major subjects and genres of floating world art: prints of beautiful women, Kabuki actors, landscapes, comic themes, erotica and commissioned paintings. In each of these he was experimental and distinctly different from his contemporaries. For example, he transformed the genre of landscape prints by incorporating Western conventions, such as cast shadows and innovative applications of perspective. This departure from tradition is an indication of his independent artistic spirit. Regularly sparring with government censors after its draconian economic and social reforms of 1841-43, he sharpened the bite of comic prints with a new genre, the ‘riddle picture’, which included the famous Earth Spider triptych, a widely pirated satire on the times.

The exhibition is divided into six sections beginning with ‘Kuniyoshi’s Imagination’ which presents the range of the artist’s repertoire and his unique treatment.  More in-depth selections follow: warriors, landscapes, beauties, theatre and humour.  Highlights include the triptychs Mitsukuni defies the skeleton spectre conjured up by Princess Takiyasha, 1845-46 and Asahina Saburô Yoshihide wrestles with two crocodiles at Kotsubo Beach, Kamakura, 1849.

OPENING HOURS: Daily: 10.00 – 18.00 Fri: 10.00 – 22.00

Image Credits:

Image 1: Utagawa Kuniyoshi, Sakata Kaidō-maru wrestles with a giant carp, c. 1837, Colour woodblock, ōban 37.8 x 26 cm, American Friends of the British Museum (The Arthur R. Miller Collection) 21215

Slide Show:

Utagawa Kuniyoshi, Hatsuhana prays under a waterfall, c. 1842, Colour woodblock, ōban 36.4 x 24.8 cm, American Friends of the British Museum (The Arthur R. Miller Collection) 15606

Utagawa Kuniyoshi, Mitsukuni defies the skeleton spectre conjured up by Princess Takiyasha, 1845-46, Colour woodblock, ōban triptych 37.2 x 25.1 (R), 37 x 25.3 (C), 37.2 x 25.3 cm (L)The British Museum, JA 1915.8-23.0915, 0916

Utagawa Kuniyoshi, Kabuki actor Onoe Kikugorō III as Old Man Kasahara, 1852, Colour woodblock, ōban 37.4 x 25.7 cm, American Friends of the British Museum (The Arthur R. Miller Collection) 00201