Torii Kiyonaga (鳥居 清長)
Japanese, 1752-1815
Person TypeIndividual
Japanese, 1797 - 1858
French, born in Lithuania and active in U.S.A., 1891 - 1973
BiographyConsidered the greatest master of color woodblock prints, or ukiyo-e, during the the Tenmei period (1781–1789), Kiyonaga succeeded his teacher Kiyomitsu (c. 1735–1785) as the leader of the Torii school, a line of artists specializing in posters of the popular Kabuki theater, prints, and playbills. He is best known, however, for large-scale compositions of graceful, classically posed beauties in evocative interior or landscape settings. Kiyonaga was a brilliant colorist and draughtsman; he was also the first artist to fully explore the use of multiple sheets of the most common size of printing paper, oban-size (about fifteen by ten inches), in one work. His original works profoundly influenced artists of the late eighteenth century, but after about 1790, Utamaro superseded him in popularity and influence on artists in the West.