Ukiyo-e
Pictures of the floating world: actors, beauties and views of Edo in mass-printed colour woodblocks
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How to recognise it
- crisp black outline, no modelling in shadow
- flat areas of unmixed colour
- high horizon, figures cropped by the edge
- title cartouche and seals in a corner
- Prussian blue in sky and water
Why it emerged
Under the long Tokugawa peace Edo's merchants grew rich and wanted cheap images of kabuki, the pleasure quarters and travel. Publishers organised an assembly line of designer, carver and printer, turning the print into a mass commodity.
Examples
The Great Wave off Kanagawac. 1831 · Katsushika HokusaiThe world's best-known Japanese print; its Prussian blue and Fuji view fed European JaponismeFrom%20Bijin-ga%20(Pictures%20of%20Beautiful%20Women)%2C%20published%20by%20Tsutaya%20Juzaburo%20-%20Google%20Art%20Project.jpg?width=640 "Kitagawa Utamaro · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons")
Three Beauties of the Present Dayc. 1793 · Kitagawa UtamaroLarge bust portraits of real townswomen: Utamaro gave each famous beauty an individual face
The Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidōc. 1833–1834 · Utagawa HiroshigeSeries on the Edo–Kyoto highway that made landscape and travel the leading print subjects
One Hundred Famous Views of Edo1856–1859 · Utagawa HiroshigeVan Gogh copied two sheets in oil, the plum garden and the sudden shower on the bridgeMore in this style
- c. 1690 Beauty Looking Back — Hishikawa Moronobu
- c. 1831 Fine Wind, Clear Morning (Red Fuji) — Katsushika Hokusai
Meanwhile elsewhere
- Ife and Benin bronzes Africa
- Ming and Qing Porcelain Asia
- Classical Ottoman Architecture (Sinan) Middle East
- Mughal Art Asia
- Baroque Europe
- Dutch Golden Age Painting Europe
- Latin American Baroque Americas
- Naryshkin Baroque Eastern Europe & Russia
- Rococo Europe
- Elizabethan Baroque Eastern Europe & Russia
- Neoclassicism Europe
- Romanticism Europe
- Realism Europe
- Impressionism Europe