Utagawa Kunisada, White, from the series Comparison of Five Colours from the Floating World, 1844
Nightlife in Tokyo
Kunisada was a man of the world, who devoted both his life and his art to Tokyo’s nightlife district. He had mastered creating portraits of beautiful women, or bijinga.
In the woodcut White, he depicted the white skin of the courtesan. The poem at the top of the print praises the beauty of all that is white: the snow, the flower, and her neck – which we can admire thanks to the mirror.
Utagawa Kunisada, Two Women in a Covered Boat, left sheet of the triptych View of Evening Cool at Azuma Bridge, 1854
An incomplete image
A striking number of prints by Kunisada from Van Gogh’s collection were originally part of triptychs and series. So, Van Gogh would have had an extremely fragmented image of the Japanese printmaker.
Because the prints were part of a larger group, the compositions sometimes appear to be rather abruptly cropped. They therefore look more modern than originally intended.