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Your galleryThe actor Matsumoto Koshiro IV as Gorobei
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Look at the scowl drawn in a few dark lines, the pipe pressed to his chin, and the checked robe that fills the bottom of the sheet.
The kabuki actor Matsumoto Kōshirō IV plays Gorobei, a fish seller, in a revenge play staged at the Kiri Theater in June 1794, the Cleveland Museum of Art explains; in the story he helps two sisters, both courtesans, take revenge for their father’s killing. Hardly anything is recorded about Tōshūsai Sharaku’s life, and all his prints were made in about ten months in 1794 and 1795. The dark mica ground makes the figure stand out sharply.
Color woodblock print; oban · 38 × 24.7 cm · Art Institute of Chicago
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Details and source
- Museum title
- The actor Matsumoto Koshiro IV as Gorobei
- Artist
- Toshusai Sharaku 東洲斎 写楽 Japanese, active 1794-95
- Date
- 1794
- Medium
- Color woodblock print; oban
- Dimensions
- 38 × 24.7 cm (15 × 9 3/4 in.)
- Credit line
- Clarence Buckingham Collection
- Image license
- CC0 1.0 · Public domain
- Museum record
- Art Institute of Chicago
Ukiyo-e c. 1600–1900
View in the AtlasGaller’s rooms and hanging scale are imagined. The image is the museum’s original digital reproduction.