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Sakata Hangorō III as the villain of the piece, Fujikawa Mizuyemon, on whom the hero of the play who is portrayed in the preceding number, and the two brothers took revenge.
The coloring of the costume is gray with touches of green about the sleeves and black at the neck.
This subject is one of the least rare of Sharaku’s bust-portraits on dark mica grounds, but different impressions vary considerably in their printing. The color blocks about the eyes seem always to have been used, but sometimes there is tinting about the jowl and in the middle of the line of the lips, and sometimes there is not. Such differences, however, merely indicate that a considerable number of impressions were demanded and that in the more hurried and less careful printing of some of these one or two of the less important color blocks were omitted; they do not show that any new blocks were cut. There are seven examples of this print in America.
See Vignier-Inada Catalogue numbers 276 and 276 bis, Rumpf number 11, Kurth, etc.
Ōban. Dark mica ground. Signed: Tōshūsai Sharaku.
The Art Institute of Chicago (Buckingham Collection).
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