The actor Ichikawa Kuzo II as Tanigoro

This ōban color woodblock print of approximately 1842 in the Art Institute of Chicago is the earliest work in the museum's Kunisada II holdings, dating from a period when the artist was signing under one of his early names (likely Baichōrō Kunisada or Kunimasa III) but is catalogued under his eventual senior identity. The subject is the kabuki actor Ichikawa Kuzō II in the role of Tanigorō, an example of the actor portrait ([yakusha-e](/glossary/yakusha-e)) genre in which the Utagawa school dominated the Edo market. Yakusha-e were the print form's commercial backbone in the mid-nineteenth century: each kabuki season produced new role-portraits of star actors that fans purchased much as later fans would buy theatre programs or celebrity photographs. The young Kunisada II's handling of the format closely follows his teacher's manner — the long oval face, the diagonal compositional structure organized around the actor's pose, the elaborately patterned costume that signals the character — and demonstrates the seamless studio-to-pupil continuity that the Utagawa naming system was designed to preserve.