Antique 19th c Woodblock Print by Adachi Ginko Samurai and Dog

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Condition Report: Overall condition good, two minor holes from haning wih a nail in the top corners. Size 36.4 x 24.2cm

A lovely woodblock

Adachi Ginko Samurai and Dog

Adachi Ginkō (安達 吟光, born 1853; active c. 1870 – 1908) was a Japanese artist best known for his prints in the ukiyo-e style as a member of the Utagawa school. He worked in a variety of genres, including portraits of beauties and actors, landscapes, book illustrations, and satirical works, and produced a large number of triptychs of contemporary events. His most successful work was his Pictorial Outline of Japanese History series of triptychs in the late 1880s. He was jailed and fined in 1889 for caricaturing the Meiji Emperor.

Life and career

Few details of Ginkō’s birth and early life are known; his birth name was Adachi Heishichi.^[a][1] He was born about the second month of Kaei 6 on the Japanese calendar (about March or April 1853).^[2]

Ginkō studied under the painter Goseda Hōryū [ja], who worked in a Western style. Ginkō may have begun designing ukiyo-e woodblock prints as early as 1870, though these purported prints of the Boshin War have not survived. Ginkō’s earliest surviving prints date to 1873—a number of yakusha-e prints of actors in the style of Toyohara Kunichika.^[1] He published his early work under the art name Shōsetsusai Ginkō.^[b][3] He found success with a series of actor prints titled Complete Issue of Top Battle Stories ^[c] in 1874.^[1] Later that year he began using the art name Adachi Ginkō.^[d][3]