Utagawa Kunisada (歌川国貞) / Toyokuni III (三代豊国) (artist 1786 – 01/12/1865)
Rustic Genji triptych - Mitsuuji viewing cherry blossoms in the Yoshiwara
ca 1851 – 1853
30 in x 14 in (Overall dimensions) color woodblock print; ōban triptych
Signed: Toyokuni ga (豊国画)
Publisher: Hamadaya Tokubei
(Marks 088 - seal 21-196)
Censor: Kinugasa and Murata
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Google maps - Yoshiwara Shrine - one of the only signs of where this famous district was
Van Gogh Museum - right-hand panel only
Jordan Schnitzler Museum of Art - left panel only
Mead Art Museum, Amhert - right-hand panel only
Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen (Rijksmuseum Volkenkunde, Leiden) via Ritsumeikan University - right-hand panel only
Chazen Museum of Art - the right-hand panel only This triptych is listed but not illustrated in Andreas Marks Genji's World at #G192. However the far right panel is illustrated in black and white in the Catalogue of the Van Gogh Museum's Collection of Japanese Prints by Charlotte van Rappard-Boon, Willem van Gulik and Keiko van Bremen-Ito, 1991, #214, p. 172.
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There are four copies of this triptych in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.
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A note to collectors, connoisseurs and the just plain curious about the alignment or misalignment of the various panels in a multipanel composition
Anyone who has spent their time looking through this site, woodblockpints.org, knows that it has quite a few things that are not offered elsewhere. It provides the visitor with more information than can be found even by many historic and significant institutions. It can be a starting point for anyone who cares to dig more deeply into the art of ukiyo-e prints on many fronts. But we are only going to deal with one of its somewhat hidden qualities: how to judge multipanel compositions from the day they appeared freshly printed to today as they are offered by (re)sellers, whether they be established galleries or individuals who use a number of online tools to market their wares.
Two particularly good tools found at this site: 1) by clicking on any of the primary prints, which includes diptychs and triptychs and such, the viewer can often enlarge an image to such a degree that even the fibers of the paper the image is printed on can be seen. Most of the accompanying jpegs can also be enlarged to some degree. And 2) the section marked 'Links' will often show other examples of the same composition being featured, almost exclusively at institutional collections, for a comparison. Sometimes, these will show prints in better condition, but sometimes the ones being shown here at the Lyon Collection are the best to be found. Those found in other collections will often differ slightly from our featured prints indicating variant editions or states which leaves a lot of work to be pondered by future scholars.
Alignment: If you have ever seen or owned a multipanel Japanese woodblock composition you might have noticed that often that the panels don't line up perfectly. That one panel might be a little larger or smaller than the one next to it. Or, that the coloring in one might be different somewhat than it's mate. This might prompt you to wonder why? How could this happen? Explanations don't come easily... at least, not until now.
This problem has been especially bad until the last few years when the owner of a triptych like this one in the Lyon Collection could not find any other examples to compare it to. Sure, there might be an illustration in an old catalog of a auction house or an museum collection, but the owner would have to run across it somewhere. Most sale catalogs and museum collections have rarely illustrated every print in their possession. But now things are greatly better, but not perfect yet. Huge numbers of institutional collections can be searched online today, but many are not. Also, there are reverse image searches that can seek out duplicate images, but while this is an imperfect tool, it is still far better than one could have imagined just a few short decades ago.
Looking closely at the triptych on this page, one would notice that left-hand panel does line up perfectly with the one in the middle. The same is true of the one in the middle and its companion on the right, but not as glaringly as the first two. How could this have happened? One explanation might be that the work created by the publishing house was a bit slipshod. That it lacked the best quality controls. However, we now know that in the case of this triptych this is not true.
Comparison of this triptych with the one in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston shows that they did have good quality control in carving and printing this whole composition. Why then is the one in the Lyon Collection different? There are a number of possibilities why. Since a huge number of Japanese woodblock prints were mounted in several types into album for easier viewing, they had to be backed for extra durability. Later when those albums were sold to dealers their contents would be removed, thus increasing the value of selling prints separately. Depending on the care taken by those who removed these prints, whole areas might have to be trimmed off the edges if they were not truly careful and were in a rush to get their job done. That would leave many prints showing different dimensions. Close, but not perfect. Or, single sheets from a multipanel composition might be floating around the marketplace until they are reunited with others from their set. In other words, many diptychs and triptychs have been hobbled together from the combination of those disparate or orphaned prints. That is, some of these prints were never together in the first place, but have been married to others which take the place of their original partners. Then the differences are more reasonable and hence more marketable.
On a personal note, this writer, thought for the longest time that the failure to present properly aligned prints in multipanel presentations had been a problem of quality control at the initial level of production. Now I know better. (JSV)
Hamadaya Tokubei (濱田屋徳兵衛) (publisher)
Genji related prints (Genji-e - 源氏絵) (genre)
Ryūtei Tanehiko (柳亭種彦) (author)