Timothy Clark Utamaro's Portaiture Summary

In Timothy Clark’s, Utamaro’s Portaiture, he stars off by speaking about Rembrandt’s Portrait of Hendrickje Stoffels. To begin, he gives background of the painting, then moves into a brief description of the paining. He then begins to describe Utamaro’s design ‘Fancy-free Type. The comparison of the two paintings was deliberately put in the beginning of the paper. Clark wanted readers to note that it is right and wrong to compare Rembrandt to Utamaro. Throughout the beginning of the article, Clark discuss the follow issues: identity of the sitters, specificity of depiction of and differentiation between the range of his subjects, and tension between bijinga tradition and Utamaro’s personal style. Utamaro was a very famous Japanese artist with

Throughout many of Utamaro paintings, he went to great lengths to identify the individual’s depicted in his prints. Clark states, “many of the women portrayed in his prints fall into three social types: Yoshiwara courtesans, tea-house women who may have worked as unlicensed prostitutes and entertainers popularly celebrated for their beauty. Utamaro had a love for illustrating many different types of women. In 1793, it was apparently forbidden to include the names of women, other than Yoshiwara courtesans in the inscriptions on prints. However, this rule upset Utamaro, so Utamaro would use punning references to names hidden in inscribed poems or by writing the names in picture-riddles Eventually, the rules became stricter and no artist was allowed to reference any women. In a less strictly policed environment, Utamaro would surely have done many more designs of named individuals. Many of the faces in Utamaro’s portraits did not always look the same. Furthermore, Utamaro almost always planned his color prints in series of complimentary designs. Every series had different aims, which evolved as his career