Torii Kiyonaga
Born Sekiguchi Shinsuke, Torii Kiyonaga was a Japanese printmaker and painter of the Torii school who lived from 1752 to 1815, during the Edo period. He was born in Uraga in the Sagami Province and moved to Tokyo to study art, becoming a master of ukiyo-e art. He began his art training with the Torii school at just 14 years old, though he may have had earlier ukiyo-e training. He changed his name to Torii Kiyonaga after his adoptive father, and art teacher, Torii Kiyomitsu.
Kiyonaga was most known for his paintings of courtesans and other beautiful women in general, called bijinga prints. His women were taller and fuller than previous Torii artists depicted them. He also did signs for the kabuki theater, known as ukiyo-e prints, as well as a series of erotic images, called shunga prints. Kiyonaga used larger sheets of paper and often broke his images up into diptych or triptych form. This larger paper size allowed for more details and fuller backgrounds.
In 1787, Kiyonaga formally took over as head of the Torii school after the death of Torii Kiyomitsu in 1785. He was the fourth person to head the school. The Torii school (鳥居派), was a form of ukiyo-e painting and printing that emerged in Edo mainly after the arrival of Torii Kiyonobu in 1687. The Torii school worked with the kabuki theater to design and create signboards and other promotional materials.
Ukiyo-e, which translates as “the floating world,” is the main style of woodblock printing in Japan. It is meant to show the impermanence and fleeting beauty of the world and all within it, such as landscapes, entertainment, and women.
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