The Actor Onoe Matsusuke I in the Wardrobe Room of a Theater

Katsukawa Shunsho's portrait of Onoe Matsusuke I in the wardrobe room of an Edo kabuki theater, dated to about 1775, belongs to the Katsukawa school's distinctive subgenre of backstage scenes. Onoe Matsusuke I was a versatile actor known above all for ghost roles and other transformations that exploited kabuki's increasingly elaborate stagecraft. Here Shunsho withdraws him from the spectacle of performance and shows him in the gakuya, the cluttered behind-the-scenes precinct where actors prepared, ate, rested, and conversed between scenes. The intimacy of the setting allowed Shunsho to apply his actor-likeness approach in a register quite different from the on-stage poses dominating most Edo ukiyo-e yakusha-e: Matsusuke is not seen striking a mie but engaged in the prosaic activity of dressing or making-up, surrounded by the props and costumes of his trade. This print, in the Art Institute of Chicago's collection, gave fans access to a privileged view that no audience member could have had from the auditorium floor. The Katsukawa school's commitment to documenting individual performers as recognizable human beings, rather than as types, finds particular expression in such gakuya prints, which combine portraiture with genre detail. The hosoban format keeps attention on the figure, while small accessories around him situate the encounter in a believable interior. Shunsho's pupils within the Katsukawa school would continue and elaborate this backstage subject, and the broader interest in the working conditions of theater would inform later artists across the nineteenth century. The sheet thus offers both a portrait of a particular star and a quietly observed picture of the labor that underlay Edo's theatrical entertainment.