A Hundred Shades of Ink of Edo: Sharaku's Caricatures

A stylized kabuki actor with a fierce, angular scowl crouches at center, his body twisted into an acrobatic pose with limbs splayed wide against a mottled grey-black ground. He wears a striped brown and yellow-green under-robe with a dark blue outer wrap, his exaggerated pale limbs bent sharply at the elbows and knees, one bare foot thrust into the lower right corner. A small ghostly white face with a red-rimmed eye appears in a green cartouche at upper right beside vertical Japanese text, and the sheet bears the printed edition number "27/100" at lower left and the artist's pencil signature at lower right.