woodcut, ukiyo-e

Wooden cut signed Shuncho with motif depicting a woman reading a letter (?) and a man looking into her through the window. The wall behind the woman is patterned with stylized bamboo. The woman has a writing box in front of her (suzuribako) and a scissors as well as a roll of paper. She wears several hairsticks, patterned with cherry bloom. The woman wears a discreet patterned costume with kikyo rods (a sort of blue bell) and an obi that is sayagata patterned (“key-fret”). Having such simple and discreet patterns became the highest fashion at the end of the 1700s, partly, according to the researchers, pga that it was a period of many when luxury prohibitions were issued in the textile area. The powerful pattern of Obin contrasts as it should against the subtle dachshund fabric. The picture has a domestic perspective, not a central perspective. The colours are in mild tones, but also bleached. This is a form of pillar pressure, but it does not quite match the hashhira-e-dimensions (70-75 cm x 12-15 cm). Katsukawa Shuncho (active ca 1780-95) was a woodcut artist in Edo and a pupil of Katsukawa Shunsho, but later also a supporter of Torii Kiyonaga’s style. Quite late in his orbit, around 1790, he was influenced by Kitagawa Utamaro to finally leave the woodcuts to sclerk novels. he includes special categories of actor portrayal and later also bijinga (pictures of beautiful women). (Roberts 1976, p 155). Hillier 1954 writes on page 134 that nothing is known about his life, except that he was a pupil of Shunsho and he believes that he was completely following Kiyonaga after a break with Shunsho. He also writes: “In his colouring, and in his pillar-print design, it is possible to pursue a note, but is skriver solo, it is skriver in duet with Kiyonaga’s.” Newland o Uhlenberg 1990 writes about Shuncho on page 88 that he was active until 1800 and that he is best known for his bijinga, not his actor pictures. The authors are also of the opinion that Shuncho closely followed Kiyonaga and that his strongest side was not the originality, but that his best pictures well measure themselves with Kiyonagas. (PH)