The Actor Nakayama Tomisaburo as a Woman at a Picnic under Autumn Maple Trees
- Date:
- ca. 1792
- Medium:
- Woodblock print; ink and color on paper
- Source:
- Metropolitan Museum of Art
Katsukawa Shunei's portrait of the actor Nakayama Tomisaburo as a Woman at a Picnic under Autumn Maple Trees, dated to around 1782, depicts an Edo onnagata performer in a seasonal outdoor setting. Nakayama Tomisaburo specialized in female roles, and Shunei portrays him in elegant kimono attending an autumn picnic beneath maple branches turning red. The maple leaves supply the seasonal device that anchors the print within the calendar of Edo [ukiyo-e](/glossary/ukiyo-e) production, where particular trees, flowers, and weather signified particular months and tied actor imagery to the broader cycle of poetic subjects. Shunei, a senior Katsukawa school [yakusha-e](/glossary/yakusha-e) specialist, brings to the scene the carefully observed facial drawing for which the school was known, even within a more landscape-inflected composition. The picnic setting allowed Edo print designers to combine the genres of actor portrait, beauty print, and seasonal scene, producing sheets that read on multiple registers at once. The work demonstrates how Katsukawa school output of the early 1780s engaged with these overlapping conventions while keeping the individual actor at the centre of the image. It is preserved at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and documented at https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/55702.
c. 1793
Color woodblock print; hosoban; from a multisheet composition (?)
c. 1794
Color woodblock print; hosoban
About 1795
Color woodblock print; ôban
c. 1793
Color woodblock print; hosoban
Noka no aki (Miyagi ken Ayashi
1946
Color woodblock print
Woodblock print
1950
Color woodblock print
Autumn 1920
Woodblock print, ink and color on paper
The Actor Nakayama Tomisaburo as a Woman at a Picnic under Autumn Maple Trees was created by Katsukawa Shun'ei (勝川春英) in ca. 1792.
The Actor Nakayama Tomisaburo as a Woman at a Picnic under Autumn Maple Trees depicts autumn foliage.