Urakusai Nagahide

The artist lived and worked in Kyoto and Osaka . Engravings depicting beauties from the Gion entertainment district brought fame to Urakusai Nagahide. These images served as advertisements of famous courtesans and geishas, ​​posters of tea houses, and also displayed fashion trends in clothes and hairstyles. Every summer, fashion festivals were held in the quarter. This topic is the subject of the Nagahide series The fashionable kimono parade in Gion . Each sheet of the series, in the e-bandzuke genre (printed programs), represented a beauty and a certain outfit, makeup and hairstyle.

Urakusai Nagahide used the tanzaku style (a poetic text illustrated with artistic images, most often girls). These engravings were made using gold and silver stamping or covered with mica powder, which gives the picture a flickering light.

Nagahide did not work in the traditional printing technique using wooden blocks, but instead used paper stencils (kappadzuri-e), a technique common in the Kamigata area (Kyoto-Osaka) from the 18th century. This printing method was notable for its cheapness and high printing speed, but inferior in color and quality of work.

• Keyes, Roger S. & Keiko Mizushima, The Theatrical World of Osaka Prints , Philadelphia, Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1973, 270.
• Lane, Richard . (1978). Images from the Floating World, The Japanese Print. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0192114476 , ISBN 9780192114471 ; OCLC 5246796
• Newland, Amy Reigle. (2005). Hotei Encyclopedia of Japanese Woodblock Prints. Amsterdam: Hotei. ISBN 9074822657 , ISBN 9789074822657 ; OCLC 61666175
• Roberts, Laurance P. (1976). A Dictionary of Japanese Artists. New York: Weatherhill. ISBN 0834801132 , ISBN 9780834801134 ; OCLC 2005932

• Museum of Fine Arts, Boston: digitized print