Japanese Ukiyo-e Appreciation · Issue 1: Beauties and Courtesans Painting (4)

Author: Suzuki Harunobu
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2002-10-01
Features: Traditional Japanese woodblock prints, including black-and-white ink drawings, hand-colored red drawings, ochre drawings, and red folding drawings, etc. Suzuki Harunobu (1725-1770) further developed these techniques, successfully creating multi-color "Brocade Pictures" (Kinsai-e) using multi-color printing. Due to their colorful brilliance and exquisite effects reminiscent of Nishijin textiles, they are also known as "Nishijin Textile-like Pictures." Brocade Pictures not only enriched the life of this artist but also balanced the development of the hundred-year-old Ukiyo-e into the mainstream of Japanese art. Suzuki Harunobu is renowned for his skill in painting beautiful women and scenes of daily life. He employed romantic techniques and dreamlike colors to depict the pure love of young girls, often setting them against detailed backgrounds of gardens and architecture. His "young girl type" beauties became popular in Japan for decades.
Ukiyo-e refers to the genre of folk paintings from the Edo period of Japan. The term "ukiyo" originates from Buddhist language, meaning the myriad phenomena of the world, or the social realities of the visible and audible. In the late 17th century, it was adopted by Japanese scholars and artists, giving rise to Ukiyo-e. The production method of Ukiyo-e began with more expensive brush paintings, followed by the widely recognized woodblock prints. Ukiyo-e includes scenes of beautiful women as its central theme, portraits of Kabuki actors as performer paintings, as well as landscapes, flowers, birds, insects, plants, and animals. Among these, the beautiful women and performer paintings are considered the two major themes of Ukiyo-e, renowned for their unique charm and widely collected by major museums around the world.