color woodcut with karazuri embossed elements, ink, paper, 24.5 x 16 cm (paper size), artist's signature, inscription in Japanese at bottom - name of figure depicted.
Tamagiku was a well-known courtesan. Here shown in a beautiful red kimono, with a tea kettle.
The woodcut is from the series "Biographies of Famous Women of Ancient and Modern Times," designed by Utagawa Kunisada I in the early 1860s and published in 1918 in Tokyo by Yoshikawa Kōbunkan. Each work in the series depicts a well-known woman from Japanese history or legend, from the poets Ono no Komachi and Sei Shonagon to the legendary warrior Tomoe Gozen and the Matsuura Sayo hime princess who turned to stone while waiting for her husband to return from Korea.
Utagawa Kunisada, also known as Utagawa Toyokuni III, was a Japanese ukiyo-e artist. He is considered the most popular, prolific and commercially successful designer of ukiyo-e woodcuts in 19th-century Japan. In his time, his reputation far exceeded that of his contemporaries, Hokusai, Hiroshige and Kuniyoshi. He was a pupil of Toyokuni Utagawa. He mostly created a variety of female portraits (bijinga), sometimes of an erotic nature (shunga), as well as images of kabuki theater actors characterized by expressive imagery. He also worked as a book illustrator in the traditional woodcut technique.
He was born near Edo as the son of a wealthy merchant with a license to run a ferry. At the age of 15, Kunisada joined Utagawa Toyokuni's prestigious art school and took the name Kunisada. In 1807. Kunisada created his first illustrated book and then published his first acting prints in 1808, quickly gaining widespread fame. While other artists such as Kuniyoshi Utagawa and Hiroshige struggled for years to gain recognition, Kunisada was a quick success from the start. He eventually became the most commercially successful woodblock printmaker of his time. In 1825, Toyokuni I died, in view of which Kunisada decided to take his master's name and began referring to himself as Toyokuni. From then on, he became recognized as Toyokuni III (the name Toyokuni II was adopted by a lesser-known ukiyo-e artist named Toyoshige, who was Toyokuni I's son-in-law and succeeded him as head of the Utagawa school after his father-in-law's death). Despite the existing rivalry between Kunisada and Kuniyoshi, the two artists engaged in joint design and publication of a series of prints. In addition, Kunisada participated in joint woodcut projactives with Hiroshige. In 1852, Kunisada created the series "Restorations in Edo," and then collaborated with Hiroshige in 1855 on the series "Fifty-three Places Painted with Two Brushes." Kunisada also presided over the ukiyo-e school. Among his most talented students were Kunichika and Chikanobu, both of whom achieved fame as outstanding artists in the Japanese woodblock printing tradition.
