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Utamaro’s Picture Books: A Study in Cross-Cultural Artistic Aesthetic

Daniel, Leah
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1428065911

Abstract Details

2015, MA, University of Cincinnati, Design, Architecture, Art and Planning: Art History.
In the postscript of Kitagawa Utamaro’s (1753-1868) first illustrated picture book in woodblock, entitled Picture Book of Crawling Creatures (Ehon mushi erami, 1788), artist Toriyama Sekien (1712-1788) penned a tribute to Utamaro’s “painting from the heart,” as Sekien described it. Art historian Julie Nelson Davis hypothesizes in her book Utamaro and the Spectacle of Beauty (2008) that the language and expressions Sekien used in this introduction indicate a painterly legacy for the pictures within, asserting that Sekien’s manner of praise would be typically reserved for painters and not woodblock print artists. It is against this background that I put forth the suggestion that Utamaro might have been equally, if not more, influenced by the Dutch naturalist art being imported through Nagasaki and consumed by Japanese scholars of Dutch culture, or rangaku scholars. Taking into account the Japanese tradition of bird and flower painting and the style of the Kano school, the premiere style of painting at the time of Utamaro’s picture books, I will investigate Davis’ hypothesis while putting forth my own. I will then support my theory that Utamaro looked to Dutch naturalism when devising his illustrations to Picture Book of Crawling Creatures, Gifts of the Ebb Tide (Shiohi no tsuto, 1789), and Myriad Birds (Momo chidori, 1790.) Bolstering this idea are the elements of engraving in Utamaro’s illustrations, such as hatching, and the likely association of Utamaro with renowned rangaku scholars such as Hiraga Gennai (1728-1780) through his publisher, Tsutaya Juzaburo (1750-1797). I will perform formal analysis of both Utamaro’s illustrations as well as previous and contemporary artworks, such as the landscape painting Shichirigahama Beach, Kamakura (1796) by Shiba Kokan (1747-1818), in order to illustrate my ideas. The dominant theory prior to this thesis was that Utamaro looked exclusively to the traditions of the Kano school in the creation of his picture books; however, it fails to give the artist the adequate credit. This thesis will orient Utamaro amongst the ranks of innovative contemporaries such as Shiba Kokan and Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849), and establish him as an artist who could both uphold classical traditions while applying new techniques and ideas. With this new perspective, Utamaro becomes an even more complex and significant artist of Japanese history that he has been credited.
Mikiko Hirayama, Ph.D. (Committee Chair)
Gergana Ivanova, Ph.D. (Committee Member)
Morgan Thomas, Ph.D. (Committee Member)
78 p.
Art History
ukiyo-e; rangaku; scientific gaze; kitagawa utamaro; utamaro; ehon mushi erami

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Daniel, L. (2015). Utamaro’s Picture Books: A Study in Cross-Cultural Artistic Aesthetic [Master's thesis, University of Cincinnati]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1428065911

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Daniel, Leah. Utamaro’s Picture Books: A Study in Cross-Cultural Artistic Aesthetic. 2015. University of Cincinnati, Master's thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1428065911.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Daniel, Leah. "Utamaro’s Picture Books: A Study in Cross-Cultural Artistic Aesthetic." Master's thesis, University of Cincinnati, 2015. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1428065911

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

ucin1428065911
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© 2015, some rights reserved.Creative Commons License Utamaro’s Picture Books: A Study in Cross-Cultural Artistic Aesthetic by Leah Daniel is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Based on a work at etd.ohiolink.edu.
This open access ETD is published by University of Cincinnati and OhioLINK.