The Actor Sanogawa Mangiku I

An early hand-coloured urushi-e by Torii Kiyoshige, dating to around 1731, depicting the kabuki onnagata Sanogawa Mangiku I on a narrow vertical hosoban sheet. Sanogawa Mangiku I was a leading female-role specialist of the Edo stage in the 1720s and 1730s, performing across the three licensed Edo theatres and supplying the Torii workshop with a continuing subject for its yakusha-e (actor pictures) through the late Genroku and Kyoho periods. The urushi-e technique - 'lacquer prints', made by impressing a black-line woodblock and then applying colour and a glossy black glue-and-lacquer admixture by hand - was the standard polychrome method of Edo printmaking before the introduction of registered colour blocks in the late 1740s. The Torii school's monopoly on Edo theatrical publicity meant that Kiyoshige's prints of Mangiku I were sold both at the theatre and through Edo print sellers as souvenirs of specific stage appearances. The hosoban sheet, approximately 31 by 14 cm, had been the school's standard yakusha-e format since the late seventeenth century. The print is preserved at the Art Institute of Chicago.