Utagawa Yoshiume (歌川芳梅) (artist 1819 – 1879)
Namajima Tōsuke (family name - 中島芳梅)Ichiōsai (go - 一鶯齋)
Yabairō (go - 夜梅楼)
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Biography:
Osaka artist, print designer, and book illustrator who went to Edo in 1847 to study with Utagawa Kuniyoshi. He was influenced by the style of kamigata-e and Kuniyoshi, producing mainly yakusha-e in the chuban format.
Source: Amy Reigle Newland, The Hotei Encyclopedia of Japanese Woodblock Prints.
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It is unusual, but Laurance P. Roberts does not list Utagawa as one of Yoshiume's names. In fact, Roberts says: "Lived mainly in Ōsaka. To Edo in 1847 to study under Kunisada [not Kuniyoshi], returning to Ōsaka in 1857. Most of his actor prints date from 1841 onward." It is worth noting that Timothy Clark wrote in 1992 of an album of giga paintings in the British Museum: "Though he worked in Osaka, Yoshiume is said to have been a pupil of Kuniyoshi, and one recalls Kuniyoshi's famous prints in which groups of small writhing figures come together to look like faces in various moods."
The British Museum biography notes: "Painter. Native of Osaka, lived at Horie. Pupil of Kuniyoshi. Earliest datable work an 'oban' actor print relating to a performance at the New Year, 1841. Designed prints of actors in the small 'chuban' format, landscapes and genre subjects and illustrated books. One of the leading Osaka Ukiyo-e artists of his day, with many pupils."
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Collections: the British Museum; the Walters Art Museum; the Edo-Tokyo Museum; the Bibliothèque nationale de France; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the National Diet Library; the Philadelphia Museum of Art; Ritsumeikan University; Waseda University; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Royal Museums of Art and History, Brussels; the Stanford University Libraries; the Library of Congress; the Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen; the Maizuru City Itoi Collection; et al.
Publishers: Wataya Kihei; Jōshūya Kinzō; Daijin from ca. 1849 to the late 1850s; et al.