Utagawa Sadayoshi (歌川貞芳) (artist )
Baisōen (go - 梅窓園)Gofūtei (go - 五飄亭)
Gohyōtei (go - 五瓢亭)
Kaishuntei (go - 魁春亭)
Kokuhyōtei (go - 国瓢亭)
Baisōen Kinkin (go - 梅窓園琴金)
Higoya Sadashichirō (nickname - 肥後屋貞七郎)
Links
Biography:
Printmaker from Osaka school, student of Kunisada. He is famous for his kabuki actor prints. Active c. 1837-1853.
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Jan van Doesburg wrote about Kunisada's production of okubi-e in 1860, where the portrait was placed against a large ground of just one color. This was at least three years after such images appeared in Osaka and by students of his from that city. Van Doesburg said in What About Kunisada? on page 114: "However, it should be mentioned that Kunisada from time to time has been in contact with some of his pupils from Ōsaka. Three of them, Utagawa Hirosada, Utagawa Kunimasu and Utagawa Sadayoshi, came to Edo in 1852 and in the autumn of that year they were invited by their master to participate in a series of half-length portraits of actors. Probably Kunisada and his three pupils have discussed the development in Ōsaka, whether or not from examples, but it still remains unclear why it took several years from that time on, before Kunisada created the first prints of the okubi-e group."
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In 1981 a small, 24 page catalog of an exhibition, entitled Japanese Prints from Iowa City Collections..., it said: "Sadayoshi was a writer as well as a print designer. Other than his various names, little else is known about him." [We don't know what print they were showing at that time.]
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In Hirosada, Ōsaka Printmaker... Roger Keyes, in a footnote on page 20, pointed out that Sadayoshi collaborated with Hirosada on the publication of A Dream of Ōsaka: A Spring Tale from the Licensed Quarter (Naniwa no yume kakuchū kidan). It appeared in five volumes starting in 1835.