THE SUN - Special Issue De Luxe Edition: UTAMARO

Beautiful and complex book showing a variety of paper styles and paper insert techniques to present large format reproductions of Utamaro�s work. Fresh and clean copy with plastic protective envelope showing some kinds of wear. Wundersch�nes und komplexes Buch, das eine Vielzahl von Papierstilen und Papiereinlegetechniken zeigt, um gro�ormatige Reproduktionen von Utamaros Werken zu pr�ntieren. Frisches und sauberes Exemplar mit Plastikschutzumschlag mit Gebrauchsspuren. Utamaro Kitagawa-Utamaro (1754 �1806), a representative Ukiyoe painter, was most active during the Tenmei and Kansei periods (1781 � 1800), when the culture of the common people in the Yedo era reached its peak, holding sway as the foremost Ukiyoe painter of beautifull women. Neither his origin nor his career is known for certain, and in this respect he is like all the other painters living among the people in those days. But his name is immortal because of about 1,000 of his Ukiyoe paintings which remain to this day. Today, his Ukiyoe prints are bought and sold at a high price of $10,000, and are kept in museums and by individuals with great care. This issue shows his career as an artist by presenting more than 300 of his masterpieces. In Chapter I, you will see his works in the early days of his creative work during the Tenmei period, when he developed his own art, while influenced by his predecessors � Toyonobu, Shunsho, Kiyonaga, Shigemasa and Harunobu. Chapter II shows you some of his famous Ukiyoe prints of beautiful women, which made him famous as a painter of women. Chapter III is a collection of his Ukiyoe prints portraying women in Yoshiwara, the licensed quarters of Yedo, where a unique culture of the common people, like the stage art of the Yedo period, developed. Chapter IV introduces to you his paintings of mothers and children � mothers still attractive and children no longer innocent or naive. In Chapter V are shown some of his pornographic masterpieces, which, to our great regret, we cannot present here in full. Chapter VI is a collection of his genre paintings, while Chapter VII presents the same Ukiyoe paintings in different prints. It is very difficult even for specialists to determine which was the first print. Chapter VIII presents six books of humorous poems by famous poets of those days, which are illustrated by Utamaro. These picture books, produced with a high level of artisanship, may be called excellent products of industrial art. This issue uses specially made Washi paper for its original-size color reproductions of Ukiyoe prints in order to reproduce as faithfully as possible the unique picture quality of Ukiyoe prints. Mr. Kiyoshi Shibui, well known throughout the world for his study of Utamaro, acted as supervisor of this special issue. - EDITOR: ICHIRO BABA