Wearing beautiful robes with strongly differentiated patterns, a nobleman with sword and arrows holds a gyrfalcon on one gloved hand, the bird a convincing study of an ever-watchful predator, absolutely motionless but poised for instant flight. Falconry was known in Japan already during the Kofun period (3rd–7th centuries) and became a sport common among members of the samurai class, hence the frequency with which the bird appears in paintings, either singly or, as here, with handler.
Kunisada was born in 1786, the son of Sumida Shobei, who operated a ferry service at Itsutsume in Edo. Becoming a pupil of Toyokuni at age fifteen, the young artist took the name Kunisada and adopted the surname of his teacher, also being called Toyokuni III after 1844. His earliest known book illustrations were produced in 1807 for Takizawa Bakin’s Oisenukado Kesha Wakamizu and from 1808 onward he created many paintings and designed full-color prints of kabuki actors. During the early 1830s Kunisada studied with Hanabusa Ikkei (1749–1844) and then took up the manner of Hanabusa Icchō, adopting elements of those styles that made his own work even more popular. Kunisada came to be one of the most famous artists of his day and also one of the most prolific, producing many—perhaps too many—book illustrations and prints of actors and beautiful women.
The course of his career can be traced via the names he took during various stages: Kunisada (ca. 1806–1843), Ichiyūsai (1811ff), Gototei (“Ferry Station Number Five,” a name he used after 1810, when his father died and he inherited the ferry license), Gepparō (1811ff), Kinraisha (1813ff), Kochōrō (1827ff), Ichiyōsai (1844ff), Hanabusa Ittai, Kitaumedo, Fuchō Sanuin, Fuchō-an, Sushi, and Kio (1862ff). The present painting is signed Ichiyōsai, a name used by Kunisada from 1844 onward, and also Sushi Toyokuni, used between 1862 and the artist’s death in 1864, so it is clearly a late work, painted with the assured confidence of a proven master of his art.
Utagawa Kunisada was a prolific artist and elegant beauties with their elongated faces and gentle winning expressions are common even when posing as a warrior, a hunter, or falconer as in the present case. Here the bijin is equipped with falconer’s gear….a heavy glove on one hand where the bird perches, a cord for securing the bird, a slender, white-tipped baton, used by falconers to control their charges, and wearing specialized tabi (slippers) and a heavy protective outer coat. She is holding what might be a sheathed blade, which would associate the image with samurai culture, a fashionable conceit characteristic of these role-playing females. The folding fan was also a means for the falconer to communicate with the bird but is furthermore` an omnipresent accoutrement in Japan for women and men alike.
The Utagawa school of artists was the most successful school of the late Edo period, including such luminaries as Hiroshige, dominating the scene and market at that time. The circular red seal following the signature here is the Utagawa school seal, rather than a personal seal, used across time by members of the school and with some variety of form over time.
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