1837
paint
From the collection of Victoria and Albert Museum
Fox-Genkurô and Others is a 1837 paint by Utagawa (Gountei) Sadahide, a Romanticism work, held at Victoria and Albert Museum.
You see a sheet of paper crowded with monsters drawn from two sides. One creature is a man on the left and a fox on the right—they share the same outline, just flipped. This was a design for a toy. Kids would cut out the figures, glue them back-to-back, and play with them. The humor is sly: the fox’s human disguise looks just as goofy as its animal form. Because people handled these prints so much, almost none survive today. To see more playful monsters, look up the Victoria and Albert Museum.
The design for a print is rendered in black and white and features multiple monsters depicted from two opposite sides, each pair sharing the same outline but reversed. One example shows the same figure presented as a man named Genkurô on one side and as a fox on the other. Additional figures include heads shaped like a teapot or a lantern, along with other monstrous forms.
Read the full account in the museum source.
Utagawa Sadahide , also known as Gountei Sadahide, was a Japanese artist best known for his prints in the ukiyo-e style as a member of the Utagawa school.
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