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「先将軍徳川家累代像」 by Kawanabe Kyosai — Japanese Woodblock print

「先将軍徳川家累代像」

by Kawanabe Kyosai

Medium:
Woodblock print
Image courtesy of
Waseda University

Description

The title Saki Shogun Tokugawa-ke Ruidai-zo translates as 'Portrait Likenesses of Successive Generations of the Former Shogunal Tokugawa House.' Published after the Meiji Restoration (1868), which ended more than two and a half centuries of Tokugawa rule, this print belongs to a category of retrospective portraiture that treated the shogunate as historical subject. Kyosai, who trained under Edo-period masters and maintained complex attitudes toward the old regime, likely arranged the fifteen Tokugawa shoguns in ranked or sequential composition. Such genealogical portrait prints drew on earlier kakemono painting traditions while adapting them to the mass-distribution medium of woodblock.

More Prints by Kawanabe Kyosai

Frequently Asked Questions

「先将軍徳川家累代像」 was created by Kawanabe Kyosai (河鍋暁斎).