Kitagawa Utamaro (1754-1806) | Yamauba and Kintaro | Edo period, 19th century

Hayashi Tadamasa (1853-1906)

Henri Vever (1854-1942)

Sotheby’s, London, Highly Important Japanese Prints, Illustrated Books and Drawings, from the Henri Vever Collection: Part I, 26 March 1974, Lot 214

Gerhard Pulverer (b. 1930)

Traditionally depicted with bright red skin, Kintaro, later known as Sakata no Kintoki , is one of the most well known heroes of Japanese folklore. He was raised on the isolated slopes of Mount Ashigara by a mountain witch, or yama-uba. Utamaro typically portrays the yama-uba as a wild, beautiful woman looking after the mischievous infant.

As many as fifty works on this subject by Utamaro are known, far exceeding those by other artists. Ranging from the humurous, sentimental and erotically charged, the reasons for Utamaro’s high output are not clear, although the public must have responded well to it. It is possible that this subject would have been safe from censorship, making it attractive from the publisher’s perspective.¹

1. Shugo Asano and Timothy Clark, The Passionate Art of Kitagawa Utamaro, (London, 1995), nos. 386-91, pp. 226-227.

A similar impression of the same print is in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, accession number RES.51.18.

For another example of a print by Utamaro of the same subject, see Sotheby's, London, Masters of the Woodblock: Important Japanese Prints, 21 July 2022, Lot 11.