Depiction of the three kabuki actors Ichikawa Ichizo III, Nakamura Fukusuke I, and Ichikawa Kodanji IV (from left to right) in the play „Sakura sōshi gonichi bundan“. Two colour woodcuts on Japan paper, each 35.1 x 24.3 cm, which together form a diptych. Both signed "Toyokuni ga" in a red Toshidama cartouche on a yellow ground. Censor/date seal: Aratame, Cock (8/1861). Publisher: Ebiya Rinnosuke. Reference: Van Gogh Museum Amsterdam no. 00004-011 (right side, there with attribution to Toyohara Kunichika).
The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam has an album with Japanese colour woodcuts that was in the estate of Dr Paul Gauchet’s and thus apparently once owned by Vicent van Gogh (the album is listed in the 1928 Gauchet’s estate catalogue under the heading "Souvenirs de Vincent van Gogh"). The album is composed of kabuki scenes that were both designed by Kunisada and by Kunichika. The right-hand side of our diptych is number 11 in the Amsterdam album (the attribution to Kunichika was obviously in error) and the fact that it is a subject that Vincent van Gogh felt was worth keeping gives it a special significance. Of course, Van Gogh was not the only artist of the time to engage intensively with Japanese art, but his painted versions of Hiroshige's colour woodcuts are probably the most famous adaptations of Japanese subjects in Western art today. However, both Kunisada's and Kunichika's expressive portraits of Kabuki actors were at least as famous in Japan in their day as Van Gogh's portraits are today.
