Samurai at the river (1850)

Utagawa Kunisada (Toyokuni III) is the artist behind "Samurai at the river", dated 1850. Context for 1850: The first half of the nineteenth century moved from Neoclassicism to Romanticism, which placed emotion, nature, and the sublime at the centre of painting. Landscape gained new prestige through groups such as the Barbizon painters in France and the Hudson River School in the United States, and by mid-century Realism turned to ordinary people and everyday labour. Background on Illustration: Printing methods such as woodcut, engraving, lithography, and photomechanical reproduction each shaped how illustrators worked. Illustration serves a text or a story, a tradition that runs from decorated medieval manuscripts to printed book plates, magazines, and posters. The catalogue places it in Illustration. The format is landscape.

Your purchase of "Samurai at the river" on onlly.art is a digital download: Digital JPEG + PDF files, 300 DPI. After payment the download link arrives by email, and you can send the files to any print service you trust. A landscape format suits wide, low wall spaces such as the stretch above a bed, mantel, or sideboard. If you are unsure about size, measure the wall first, then pick a frame whose proportions follow the image. Screens and printers render colour differently, so a small test print is a sensible way to check tones before committing to a large size. Matte and fine-art papers reduce glare in bright rooms, while glossy papers give stronger contrast and deeper blacks. Choosing a standard frame size and printing to fit it often saves the cost of custom framing.

Japanese, 1786–1865

If you like the visual language of Utagawa Kunisada (Toyokuni III), explore more works by the same artist in our collection.