Katsukawa School

勝川派

Katsukawa School

print designer

The Katsuwaka school artists, headed by Shunshô, introduced a new level of realism into their portraits of actors, depicting them with such fidelity that kabuki enthusiasts of the day could identify the celebrities on the basis of facial resemblance alone. That, and a new aesthetic for an uncluttered look in the wake of Harunobu's innovations of the 1760s meant that actor prints of the 1770s and 1780s often lack any inscriptions, making it difficult for us today to reconstruct the role and play.

Katsukawa Shun'ei (Japanese, 1762-1819)

Teacher of: Katsukawa Shunshō (Japanese, 1726-1792)