Returned to lender The Met accepts temporary loans of art both for short-term exhibitions and for long-term display in its galleries.
The Actors Ichikawa Yaozō III as Fuwa no Banzaemon Shigekatsu and Sakata Hangorō III as Kosodate Kannonbō
Tōshūsai Sharaku Japanese
Not on view
Sharaku’s lasting fame is due to the success of twenty-eight “large-head portraits” (ōkubi-e) with mica backgrounds, all created in early 1794, three of which are displayed nearby. Yet the artist followed up that effort with thirty-eight full-length portraits inspired by Kabuki performances of the seventh and eighth months of the same year. Some are large-format ōban, as here; others are in narrower formats. For reasons still unclear, by early the next year he would cease making prints altogether. Here, we see Ichikawa Yaozō (1747–1818) play the popular stock character Fuwa no Banzaemon—with an unshaven pate indicating he has fallen on bad times—as he receives a sword from the monk Kosodate Kannonbō, who had helped steal it from a rival.
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