The definitive work
I can only begin to imagine the amount of work that went into producing this astounding catalogue, which is so comprehensive but at the same time portable for the field. Utamaro produced around 2,000 prints, but often it's the same ones that are discussed in books about him, so it's one thing to know there are 2,000 prints but quite another to have access to all of them. This catalogue changes that because it has them all, with full descriptions and details of the publisher, date, format, current location, and where the print has been illustrated or mentioned in other reference books. A lot of thought has obviously gone into the layout of this book. The indexes provide easy access to the catalogue entries, and the entries themselves are separated into groups depending on whether the prints were issued as sets or single sheets, or are titled or untitled. A complete catalogue of Utamaro's prints was long overdue, and this work fills the role beautifully. This is an important addition to the field of Ukiyo-e scholarship.
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Overview
Kitagawa Utamaro was the leading light of the popular Ukiyo-e school of woodblock print designers during its golden age, famous throughout Japan within his own lifetime, an immeasurable influence upon nineteenth century French artists, such as Vincent Van Gogh, Édouard Manet and Claude Monet, and is a continuing source of inspiration and admiration throughout the world today for his portraits of sumptuously garbed courtesans and sensitively drawn depictions of everyday life in eighteenth century Edo. This volume, the first catalogue to document all of Utamaro's known print designs in the broadsheet format, provides a comprehensive descriptive listing of the artist's works, along with more than a hundred and thirty