Kitagawa Utamaro: Japanese Artist

Kitagawa Utamaro was a famous Japanese woodcut artist whose work tended to focus on women. Utamaro was an 18^th century artist.

His work featured slightly stylized images of women. Utamaro did not use color to show light or darkness in his work. He used stylized lines of varying thicknesses to tell a story.

One of Utamaro’s well known works is Hairdressing, which shows a Japanese woman having her hair styled. Appearance and personal grooming were important parts of Japanese samurai culture.