Ichikawa Monnosuke II as Urabe Suetake, Onoe Matsusuke I as Usui Sadamitsu, and Nakamura Nakazo I as Watanabe no Tsuna in “The Four Heavenly Kings Costumed as the Night Watch”
1781
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
1781
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Ichikawa Monnosuke II as Urabe Suetake, Onoe Matsusuke I as Usui Sadamitsu, and Nakamura Nakazo I as Watanabe no Tsuna in “The Four Heavenly Kings Costumed as the Night Watch” is a 1781 by Katsukawa Shunzan, a Romanticism work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
This painting shows three actors dressed as characters from a story. They are wearing robes with big crests on them. The crests help identify who they are supposed to be. One interesting thing about this work is that the actors are playing specific roles. The fan tucked into Onoe Matsusuke I's robe has a symbol that means "pine" in Japanese. This helps us figure out which character he is playing. You can learn more about this style by looking at the work of Katsukawa Shunzan.
