Ishikawa Toyonobu

Who They Were

Ishikawa Toyonobu (石川豊信) was a Japanese ukiyo-e artist active during the Edo period (1603–1868). He was born in 1711 in Tokyo and died on July 1, 1785. His career spanned the middle decades of the eighteenth century, a period of transition in ukiyo-e from monochrome prints to early colour printing.

Toyonobu worked as a wood engraver, painter, illustrator, and ukiyo-e artist. He was a pupil of Nishimura Shigenaga, a prominent print designer of the time. Some scholars have suggested that Toyonobu may have been the same person as Nishimura Shigenobu, a contemporary artist about whom very little is known, but the identification remains uncertain.

Life and Career

Toyonobu studied under Nishimura Shigenaga, and his early output consisted largely of monochrome "lacquer prints" (urushi-e). These prints used a thick black ink mixed with glue to create a glossy, lacquer-like effect. The influence of Okumura Masanobu, another major artist of the period, is also visible in Toyonobu's work from this phase.

Many of his lacquer prints were yakusha-e (actor prints) and bijin-ga (images of beautiful women). Among the latter were portraits of standing courtesans, whose faces carried an impassive, expressionless quality. This stylistic trait echoed the works of the Kaigetsudō school, a group of artists active earlier in the eighteenth century known for their statuesque depictions of courtesans.

Toyonobu also experimented with semi-nude figures, a subject his chief predecessors had also attempted. These images showed women with the top half of their kimono open and lowered to reveal their chests. Art historian Richard Lane observed that such prints were intended as suggestive and erotic, and that they were not, in his words, a "glorification of the human form such as we find in Greek art." Toyonobu never succeeded in turning this subject into a lasting trend or subgenre within ukiyo-e.

Later in his career, Toyonobu became one of the leading producers of colour prints, chiefly benizuri-e ("rose prints"). These prints used a limited palette of pink and green, applied by woodblock. He continued in this vein until 1765, when Suzuki Harunobu pioneered the full-colour print known as nishiki-e. Shortly after that innovation, Toyonobu stopped producing ukiyo-e altogether.

Why They Matter

Toyonobu matters as a bridge figure in the history of ukiyo-e. He began in the monochrome tradition, producing lacquer prints in the style of his teacher and of Okumura Masanobu, and ended as a leading maker of benizuri-e, the immediate precursor to full-colour printing. His career thus spans the technical evolution from hand-coloured or monochrome prints to the multi-colour woodblock process that defined the medium's golden age.

His actor prints and images of beautiful women were commercially successful and helped sustain the demand for ukiyo-e in Edo. His semi-nude experiments, while not influential as a genre, show the range of subject matter that print artists explored in the mid-eighteenth century. Lane's commentary on these works also makes Toyonobu a point of reference for discussions of eroticism in Japanese art.

Toyonobu's decision to retire from printmaking after Harunobu's nishiki-e revolution is itself telling. It marks the moment when the older generation of print artists gave way to a new one, and when the technical standards of ukiyo-e shifted decisively toward full colour.

The Name in Japanese

The name is 石川豊信.

• Kana reading: いしかわ とよのぶ
• Romaji: Ishikawa Toyonobu

The name breaks down as follows:

• 石 (ishi) — "stone." This is the first character of the family name.
• 川 (kawa) — "river." Together, 石川 means "stone river," a common Japanese surname.
• 豊 (toyo) — "abundant" or "bountiful." This is the first character of the given name.
• 信 (nobu) — "trust" or "faith." The second character of the given name.

So the full name literally reads "stone river abundant trust." The family name, Ishikawa, is one of the more common surnames in Japan. The given name, Toyonobu, follows the traditional pattern of combining a positive attribute (豊, abundance) with a virtue (信, trustworthiness).

In Japanese, the family name comes first, so 石川豊信 is properly rendered as Ishikawa Toyonobu, not Toyonobu Ishikawa. The kana reading いしかわ とよのぶ reflects the standard pronunciation of both characters in their modern forms.

Legacy

Toyonobu had at least one notable pupil, Ishikawa Toyomasa, who is known chiefly for his depictions of children at play. Toyomasa may have been Toyonobu's son, though the relationship is not firmly established. If he was, then Toyonobu's artistic lineage continued within his own family.

Toyonobu's own son, Ishikawa Masamochi, is recorded as his child, though Masamochi is not known as an artist. The connection between Toyonobu and Toyomasa, whether biological or professional, links Toyonobu to a later generation of ukiyo-e artists who carried the tradition forward.

Toyonobu's prints remain part of museum collections and art historical studies, particularly for the light they shed on the transition from monochrome to colour printing. His lacquer prints and benizuri-e are studied as examples of the technical and stylistic developments of the mid-eighteenth century. His semi-nude images, though a minor part of his output, are cited in discussions of erotic art within ukiyo-e.

After his retirement in the mid-1760s, Toyonobu disappears from the historical record of printmaking. He died in 1785, twenty years after the arrival of nishiki-e had transformed the medium he had practised for decades.