page_title: Utamaro's pictures of abalone divers
section_title: Background
hierarchical_section_title: Utamaro's pictures of abalone divers / Background
caption_attribution_description: English: Ukiyo-e print
context_page_description: The Japanese ukiyo-e artist Kitagawa Utamaro made a number of prints depicting ama divers—women whose work is to dive for shellfish or pearls—catching haliotis abalone sea snails.
  Amongst the prints are the first print in the erotic book Utamakura; two triptychs called Awabi-tori, one from c. 1788–90 and the other from c. 1797–98; and the hexaptych Enoshima Yūryō Awabi-tori no Zu of c. 1804–06. Utamaro's heir Utamaro II published the triptych Enoshima Awabi-ryō no Zu in the early 19th century, signed Utamaro.
context_section_description: Ukiyo-e art flourished in Japan during the Edo period from the 17th to 19th centuries, and took as its primary subjects courtesans, kabuki actors, and others associated with the "floating world" lifestyle of the pleasure districts.  Alongside paintings, mass-produced woodblock prints were a major form of the genre.  In the mid-18th century full-colour nishiki-e prints became common, printed using a large number of woodblocks, one for each colour.  A prominent genre was bijin-ga ("pictures of beauties"), which depicted most often courtesans and geisha at leisure, and promoted the entertainments of the pleasure districts.
  Kitagawa Utamaro (c. 1753–1806) made his name in the 1790s with his bijin ōkubi-e ("large-headed pictures of beautiful women") portraits, focusing on the head and upper torso.  He experimented with line, colour, and printing techniques to bring out subtle differences in the features, expressions, and backdrops of subjects from a wide variety of class and background.  Utamaro's individuated beauties were in sharp contrast to the stereotyped, idealized images that had been the norm.
caption: Sugatami Shichinin Keshō, Utamaro, c. 1792–93
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