Kitagawa UTAMARO I UTAMARO I. Happy Togetherness for Umegawa and Ch?bei (Umegawa Ch?bei no kihan).
Kitagawa UTAMARO I.Early 1750s–1806
Happy Togetherness for Umegawa and Ch?bei (Umegawa Ch?bei no kihan).Around 1800
Polychrome woodcut. Oban:375x252 mm. The print is presented in the traditional form: glued on thickr paper and surrounded by a large frame in decorated ivory paper. At the bottom right the signature “Utamaro hitsu”. Under the publisher’s mark of ?miya Gonkur?, Japanese Edo period about 1798–99 (Kansei 10–11). Good condition.
Very rare print from the series Eight Pledges at Lovers' Meetings (?mi hakkei). The two young lovers stroll and Ch?bei protects Umegawa with an umbrella. Ch?bei, aged 24, was a courier who stole money from a client to ransom his lover, the low-ranking courtesan Umegawa, aged 22. They fled and went into hiding, but were eventually captured and executed (or in some theatrical versions, they committed double suicide). See: Asano and Clark 1995, #294; Ukiyo-e sh?ka 3 (1978), list #312.2; Shibui, Ukiyo-e zuten Utamaro (1964), 161.1.2; Yoshida, Utamaro zensh? (1941), #408.