Page 101 - September 21 2021 Important Japanese Art Christie's NYC

115 TOSHUSAI SHARAKU (ACT. 1794-95)

The actor Iwai Hanshiro IV

as the Wet Nurse Shigenoi in
the play 'Koinyobo somewake
tazuna'

Woodblock print, signed Toshusai Sharaku ga,
published by Tsutaya Juzaburo (Koshodo), circa
1794
Vertical oban: 14¬ x. 9æ in. (37.1 x 24.8 cm.)

$80,000-120,000

Shigenoi is the tragic heroine of a play about love and loyalty. Theories persist about the identity of the master Sharaku, who worked
This print shows the climax of the drama, known as Shigenoi's for ten months between 1794 and 1795 in collaboration with the publisher
kowakare (parting from her child). The scene takes place on the Tsutaya Juzaburo. Was he a Noh actor, a retainer of a daimyo, a woman,
departure of a feudal lord's daughter to a distant province to be Tsutaya himself? The portrait here is among the thirty masterworks of
married. Shigenoi, a maid, meets her long-lost young son, a the artist distinguished by their psychological intensity and reductive
child horseman who had been summoned to entertain the young approach. So appealing today, it was said at the time that Sharaku's
lady. The son recognizes his mother, Shigenoi, by hearing her prints were too real, which may account for his sudden disappearance after
name and shows her a cloth amulet case, which Sharaku pictures such intense output. He was one of the few risks that soured for Tsutaya,
here in her hand. Shigenoi had given it to him at their initial but his faith in the artist is vindicated by the reverence for Sharaku prints
separation. that has persisted since the nineteenth century.
The actor who performs this role requires great skill to impart (Wall Label, "Designed for Pleasure: The World of Edo Japan
the character's psychological complexity. Iwai Hanshiro IV, in Prints and Paintings, 1680--1860," Asia Society Museum,
famous for his chubby face, was one of the most celebrated published in Impressions, journal of the Japanese Art Society of
female-role actors of the Kansei era. America, the exhibition co-organizer, no. 30 [2009]: 192.)
The enigmatic master Toshusai Sharaku was also a principal
focus of the 2008 exhibition "Designed for Pleasure" in New
York, which remarked: