The Actor Segawa Tomisaburo II in an Unidentified Role

Katsukawa Shunei's portrait of the actor Segawa Tomisaburo II shows the female-role specialist in costume that has not been firmly identified with a specific production, a not uncommon situation for ephemeral kabuki actor prints whose original theatrical referents have been lost. Segawa Tomisaburo II was a noted onnagata of the Tenmei and Kansei eras, often appearing in the same casts as Segawa Kikunojo III and Iwai Hanshiro IV, and Shunei drew him repeatedly across the 1780s and 1790s. Here the actor is presented in elegant feminine attire, the kimono pattern carefully delineated and the face rendered with the precise, individualized likeness that distinguished the Katsukawa school's approach to Edo yakusha-e from earlier traditions of generic stage-type portraiture. As Katsukawa Shunsho's most accomplished pupil, Shunei carried the workshop's lifelike approach forward, and his sheets of Segawa Tomisaburo II add up to a sustained portrait of an onnagata career. Even without a firmly identified play title, the print would have been instantly legible to contemporary Edo audiences, who could match the actor's likeness, his hairstyle, and his accessories to a current run at one of the licensed theaters. The Art Institute of Chicago preserves this impression among its broader holdings of Katsukawa-school onnagata portraits, where it complements other Shunei sheets of Tomisaburo and supports comparative study of the school's onnagata style.