12
Sanogawa Ichimatsu III as O-Nayo and Ichikawa Tomiyemon as Kanisaka Tōda. Ichimatsu is here shown in the same rôle and the same costume as that in which he is seen alone in the preceding print.
Tomiyemon on the right is in a kimono of yellow with green checks which has broad black bands at the neck and sleeves. His tonsure is light blue and there are touches of rose around his eyes. Ichimatsu has an outer kimono of violet and a red under garment. His head cloth and comb are the usual violet and yellow.
We exhibit the only impression of the print in America, and in this connection would say again that Sharaku’s bust-portraits with two figures do not seem to have been popular when they were issued. If there had been a demand for more impressions of them in 1794, we would be likely to have more of them now. Two other copies of the subject have been recorded and have been the originals from which various reproductions have been taken. Rumpf’s number 29 rephotographs a print once in the Mutiaux Collection and reproduced as number 284 in the Vignier-Inada Catalogue. Kurth and those that follow him use an original in the Kunstgewerbemuseum in Berlin which is more strongly printed and slightly larger than the other. It is a little larger and in better condition than the one we exhibit, and like ours it shows the hair through the comb and a tinting of Tomiyemon’s tonsure, neither of which details is visible, at least in the reproductions of the Mutiaux impression.
Ōban. Dark mica ground. Signed: Tōshūsai Sharaku.
The Art Institute of Chicago (Buckingham Collection).
72
