Sharaku

Tōshūsai Sharaku is one of ukiyo-e's great enigmas: a print designer who appeared in Edo in 1794, produced roughly 144 known woodblock portraits of kabuki actors and sumo wrestlers in about ten months, and then vanished. His early ōkubi-e — large-headed bust portraits set against glittering black mica grounds — are prized for a psychological realism unusual for the genre: rather than the idealized beauty favored by contemporaries such as Utamaro, Sharaku rendered actors with unflattering noses, wrinkles, and exaggerated, almost caricatural expressions caught mid-gesture on stage.