Brief lezende vrouw

1793 - 1797 · Print

Can I see it?

Unknown

Where is “Brief lezende vrouw” now? Collection: Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. Unknown.

Rijksmuseum

Amsterdam, Netherlands

The owner is known; whether it is on view today is not.

Source: The museum

On the map Museum page

About the work

Museum text in Dutch

Vrouw, ten halven lijve, een brief lezend; tegen mica achtergrond.

Rijksmuseum

Details

Accession number: RP-P-1956-602

What it shows

Woman Letters and envelopes

In the catalog

Prints Japanese prints Neoclassicism 18th century

Sources

Rijksmuseum
Image: Rijksmuseum — public domain

In the life of Kitagawa Utamaro

The whole life

1790–1801
Tightening censorship: seals on prints
From 1790 prints can be sold only with a censor's seal of approval; over the following decades censorship grows stricter, and violators can receive harsh punishments. From 1799 even preliminary drafts need approval, and in 1801 the works of a group of Utagawa-school offenders, including Toyokuni, are repressed.
c. 1791
Giving up book prints for half-length portraits of beauties
Around 1791 Utamaro gives up designing prints for books and concentrates on single portraits of women shown half-length, rather than the group scenes favoured by other ukiyo-e artists. He was the first in Japanese woodblock printing to use half-length compositions for women's portraits; none of his work from 1790–1792 has survived.
1793
Recognition and the end of the arrangement with Tsutaya
In 1793 Utamaro achieves recognition as an artist, and his semi-exclusive arrangement with the publisher Tsutaya Jūzaburō ends. He then goes on to produce several well-known series featuring women of the Yoshiwara district, and becomes one of the few ukiyo-e artists to win fame throughout Japan in his lifetime.
1797
The death of his friend and patron Tsutaya Jūzaburō
In 1797 Utamaro's long-time friend and supporter, the publisher Tsutaya Jūzaburō, dies; the artist is apparently very upset by the loss, and some commentators feel that his work never reached its former heights afterwards. He later lives in Kyūemon-chō, then Bakuro-chō, and finally near the Benkei Bridge.

All works