The Actor Sanogawa Mangiku I

A single-figure hosoban urushi-e portrait by Torii Kiyomasu II of Sanogawa Mangiku I, one of the leading onnagata of late 1720s and early 1730s Edo kabuki. Sanogawa Mangiku I appears across Kiyomasu II's surviving prints as one of the most frequently portrayed actors of the period, his career documented through a sequence of single-figure portraits and play-specific role studies that together constitute the principal pictorial record of his theatrical activity. The single-figure portrait on a narrow hosoban sheet was the Torii school's default yakusha-e composition, allowing the full-length standing figure to occupy the entire vertical extent of the print without competing accessory work. The format had been codified by Kiyomasu I and Kiyonobu I at the turn of the eighteenth century and was carried through the subsequent generations of Torii school production with only modest modification. The urushi-e medium - black ink thickened with animal glue and dusted with brass filings or other metallic powders to simulate the surface of lacquerware - represented the most refined polychrome technique available to Edo print designers in the period before the introduction of registered colour blocks. The Art Institute of Chicago dates this print to circa 1731, placing it in the heart of Kiyomasu II's mature career and well after the death of his predecessor Kiyomasu I, confirming the attribution to the second-generation Kiyomasu. The Sanogawa family of actors supplied Edo kabuki with leading onnagata across the late 1710s, 1720s, and 1730s, and Mangiku I's portraits by Kiyomasu II are among the most carefully observed single-figure studies of the Torii school's mature production. Held at the Art Institute of Chicago.