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Taira no Atsumori in the Battle of Ichinotani
Attributed to Sugimura Jihei Japanese
Not on view
Ukiyo-e printmakers of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries focused as a rule on depictions of actors and women of the demimonde, not to mention erotica for popular consumption. But ukiyo-e artists also participated in the popularization of the Japanese literary classics by producing easy-to-afford pictures of favorite episodes. Here, for instance, the celebrated warrior Taira no Atsumori appears mounted on a horse near shore amid a naval battle recorded in the medieval martial epic Tale of the Heike, which chronicles the Genpei wars of 1170–85.
Sugimura, who rarely signed his prints, was one of the ukiyo-e artists active during the same period as the celebrated print artist, book illustrator, and painter Hishikawa Moronobu (died 1694) in his final years.
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