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Kitagawa Utamaro Japanese Painter
Utamaro emerged as one of the greatest masters of late eighteenth-century Japanese art and helped define the golden age of the woodblock printing technique.
But in 1804, Utamaro was arrested and imprisoned for three days for his illegal depiction of men from the Japanese Samurai warrior caste in a print series, and for producing an image of daimyō(land-holding magnate) Katō Kiyomasa gazing lustily at a Korean courtesan. In another, he depicted former Japanese ruler Toyotomi Hideyoshi holding the hand of his officer Ishida Mitsunari in a sexually suggestive manner, thereby blatantly defying the law forbidding the portrayal of famous political figures (especially if engaged in dubious or unflattering activities). Utamaro further bridged the gap between East and West by being one of the first Japanese artists to apply Western principles of perspective to his art (as seen in works like Moonlight Revelry at Dozo Sagami(n.d.), Moon at Shinagawa(c. 1788), Cherry Blossoms at Yoshiwara(c. 1793), and Snow at Fukagawa(1802-06)).
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