The Actor Ichikawa Danjūrō
The faces in these prints were instantly recognizable to Kabuki fans in the 1770s. People collected their favorites, choosing between actors like Nakamura Tomijūrō, with his high eyebrows, and Ichikawa Danjūrō, with his prominent nose. The artist Katsukawa Shunshō innovatively rendered these figures with stylized but individual traits. Shunshō also included the crests of the actors on their costumes, which give us further clues about the portrayed figures. The three-layered squares on the figure in the center indicates that the actor is Ichikawa Danjūrō.
Howard Mansfield, New York, by January 1932;
Purchased from Howard Mansfield, New York, NY, by The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, May 1932
Howard Mansfield (1849-1938), Seal Harbor, ME, by April 4, 1932 [1];
Purchased from Mansfield, through Langdon Warner, by The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1932.
NOTES:
[1] Letter from Howard Mansfield to Langdon Warner, April 4, 1932, Harvard University Pusey Library, Langdon Warner Personal Archive, HUG 4872.1010, box 12, folder 14, copy in Nelson-Atkins curatorial files. Howard Mansfield was a lawyer who collected Asian art and the prints of James Whistler. According to the Archives Directory for the History of Collecting, Frick Art Reference Library, he was a trustee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York and served as its first acting curator of Asian art prior to the appointment of the Met's first staff curator.
