Detail View: The AMICA Library: The actor Ichikawa Komazo III as Sukeroku
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AMICA ID:
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AIC_.1937.27
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AMICA Library Year:
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1998
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Object Type:
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Prints
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Creator Name:
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Katsukawa, Shun'ei
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Creator Nationality:
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Asian; Far East Asian; Japanese
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Creator Dates/Places:
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Japanese; 1762-1819 Asia,East Asia,Japan
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Creator Name-CRT:
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Katsukawa Shun'ei
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Title:
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The actor Ichikawa Komazo III as Sukeroku
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Title Type:
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preferred
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View:
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full view
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Creation Date:
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1793 or 1797 (?)
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Creation Start Date:
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1793
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Creation End Date:
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1797
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Materials and Techniques:
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Woodblock print.
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Classification Term:
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Woodblock
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Creation Place:
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Asia,East Asia,Japan
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Dimensions:
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Hosoban, part of a multisheet composition; 35.6 x 15.6 cm
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AMICA Contributor:
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The Art Institute of Chicago
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Owner Location:
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Chicago, Illinois, USA
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ID Number:
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1937.27
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Credit Line:
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The Art Institute of Chicago, The Clarence Buckingham Collection
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Inscriptions:
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UNSIGNED [printed "Shunsho ga" added]
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Rights:
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Context:
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Sukeroku is here played by Ichikawa Komazo III, who poses beneath a flowering cherry tree - probably in the main street (Naka no Cho) of the Yoshiwara pleasure district - holding a furled umbrella. This is probably the left-hand sheet of a triptych, whose other two sheets would show the courtesan Agemaki and Sukeroku's villainous rival, Ikyu?.Komazo III played the role of Sukeroku twice: Yorozuya Sukeroku (a reworking of the familiar tale in historical disguises by the playwright Sukurada Jisuke) at the Ichimura Theater in the third month of 1793, and Agemaki no Sukeroku (in a more standard version of the story) at the Kawarazaki Theater in the third month of 1797. Since the costume would have been the same in both productions, we can only know which performance this print relates to by discovering which actors were portrayed on the two missing sheets of the triptych.The print bears the printed signature 'Shunsho ga,' but Shunsho had died on the eighth day of the twelfth month, 1792. Either the signaturewas added later to the impression, or - assuming the print was published in the third month of 1793 - the publisher was deliberately capitalizing on the name of the recently deceased and highly esteemed artist. In any case, the elongated, elegant manner of drawing the figure and the particular style of drawing the face is typical of Shun'ei, to whom the print is attributed. An advance publicity handbill (tsuji banzuke) shows Komazo III as Sukeroku in the production of 1797 (see 'The Actor's Image' catalogue, fig. 130.1, p.347), holding aloft the open umbrella.The colors of the print are unusually strong and unfaded.
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Related Image Identifier Link:
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AIC_.E19819.TIF
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