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Album of Actor Portraits
Shōrakusai (Japanese)
c. 1790–1810
- Medium
- accordion-style album; ink and color on silk mounted on paper and ink on paper
- Classification
- Bound Volume
- Dimensions
- Album, opened: 28.1 x 42 cm (11 1/16 x 16 9/16 in.)
- Culture
- Japan, Edo period (1615–1868)
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, Japanese Art
- Credit line
- Kelvin Smith Fund
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Tweens profiles and older: its subjects are known and suit older children. How works are placed
View at the Cleveland Museum of Art
About this work
The paintings in this album show Kabuki actors costumed for their roles in a variety of plays. The characters are identified in the paper cartouches affixed to the paintings. While each painting is on silk that has been pasted into the album, the poems on some of the facing pages have been written in ink directly onto the page.
