11Story

22 January 2010

Dead actor

 

Memorial portrait of artist Utagawa Kunisada (1786-1865) shown with actor Ichikawa Danjuro above. Toyohara Kunichika (1835-1900). Japan, 1865 -1900 Photograph. Original colour woodblock print, inscribed, sealed. 26.45 x 17.38 cm © Trustees of the British Museum 1906, 1220, 0.1134	Dutch commercial attaché with portrait of a woman. Utagawa Sadahide (1807-1873). Yokahama, circa mid-19th century Photograph. Original colour woodblock print, inscribed, sealed. 26.45 x 17.91 cm © Trustees of the British Museum 1946, 0413, 0.13		A Courtesan with portrait of her Dutch lover. Unknown artist [publisher Yamatoya-han]. Nagasaki, circa 1800 Photograph. Original colour woodblock print, inscribed, sealed. 26.45 x 12.22 cm © Trustees of the British Museum 1951, 0714, 0.20
These three prints suggest variations in the visual representation of thought, longing, memory and imagination. Since in Japanese portraiture faces may register emotion but are recognised as opaque to ‘constructions of the mind’, absent realities are shown as dominating or disrupting the scene, even, in the example of Dutch commercial attaché with portrait of a woman, flouting pictorial convention for the viewer.

 
 
 

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