Utagawa Kunikiyo I (19th Century) Japanese, Framed Woodblock Triptych. Depicts women being carried by men through a river. Multiple instances of kanji throughout, in the three-sheet ukiyo-e woodblock print called "hanga." The river shown is the Tokaido Ooi, which flooded frequently and led to porters regularly transporting travelers across for a fee. 

Overall Size: 36 1/2 x 22 1/2 in. 

Sight Size: 29 x 14 in. 

#9016 . 

Utagawa Kunikiyo I was a Japanese ukiyo-e artist in the early to late 19th Century. Almost nothing is known of his personal life, although he was apparently popular enough that he had a pupil of his own, Kunikiyo II, who passed away in 1887. Kunikiyo I was a pupil of the infamous Utagawa Kunisada (also known as Utagawa Toyokuni III), who splintered his school off from the original Utagawa school when he was passed over to be its head by a lesser known artist who had married the daughter of Toyokuni I. There are vast similarities between many of the works made by artists from both factions, partially because the school was reunited after the death of Utagawa Toyoshige (also known as Toyokuni II) in 1835. Kunisada also supposedly created over 20,000 individual works in his lifetime, and most modern scholars now acknowledge that a great number of his later works were completed either by or with the assistance of his pupils, and bear his name solely in order to sell well and gain prestige. Kuniyiko likely completed some of the pieces made in the final years of Kunisada’s life, and emulated earlier artists as well such as Hokusai and Toyohiro. Nevertheless, Kunikiyo set himself apart from his peers by focusing most heavily on crafting triptychs, often of dynamic views of the Japanese countryside or important historical events.