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Toshusai Sharaku (Japanese: 東洲斎写楽) (17?? -
1801?) was one of the great masters - and one of the great innovative
and creative geniuses - of the
Japanese
woodblock print, in addition to being the greatest mystery in the
world of
ukiyo-e, and one of the great enigmas in all of world art.
First, we know next to nothing of him, other than his prints; not even
his true name, or the date of his death, is known with any certainty.
Second, and even more astonishing, his active career as a woodblock artist
seems to have spanned a mere ten months, at the end of
1794 and start of
1795. He appeared from nowhere, instantly attained the greatest
heights of genius (it has been asserted by some that he ranks with
Rembrandt and
Velazquez as one of the three greatest portrait artists of all time),
and disappeared with equal rapidity.
Biography
As best we can now tell, he appears to have been a
Noh actor named Saito Jurobei, in the service of the
daimyo of
Awa, the Hachisuka family. One theory (for which there is no known
evidence either way) for his abrupt disappearance is that his master was
unhappy with his retainer's association with the demi-monde of the
kabuki theatre, instead of the more refined Noh theatre which the
master supported.
Retrospective Observations
His career appears to have been so brief in part because the radical
nature nature of his work aroused the hostility of the art world in
Edo. One contemporary manuscript writes:
- "Sharaku designed likenesses of Kabuki actors, but because he
depicted them too truthfully, his prints did not conform to accepted
ideas, and his career was short.."
It seems likely that his prints, with their tendency to wring the last
drop of truth from his subjects through close depiction of personal
characteristics, left customers with a sense of unease, and made his
prints difficult to sell. Further, it seems plausible that he was
unwilling to compromise his art, and his critics hounded him from the art
world.
Indeed, his work did not become popular among collectors in Japan until
artists and collectors in the West discovered him in the late nineteenth
century. He is now considered one of the greatest of all woodblock
artists, and the first 'modern' artist of Japan, and the extraordinarily
rare originals of his prints command fantastic sums at auctions.
Further Reading
- Muneshige Narazaki, Sharaku: The Enigmatic Ukiyo-e Master
(Kodansha, Tokyo, 1983)
- Harold G. Henderson, Louis V. Ledoux, Sharaku's Japanese Theatre
Prints: An Illustrated Guide to his Complete Work (Dover
Publications, New York, 1984)
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