Paper short abstract:

The rediscovery of a long-lost painting attributed to Utamaro stunned the art world in 2014 and sparked an international controversy about the triptych to which it may belong. After an overview, I will discuss the evidence and offer an analysis of authenticity for these ukiyo-e paintings.

Paper long abstract:

In March 2014, the Okada Museum of Art made an announcement that stunned the art world: it had rediscovered a long-lost painting attributed to famed Japanese artist, Kitagawa Utamaro (1753?-1806). Titled Fukagawa in the Snow, the last public exhibition of the painting was in 1952 at an Utamaro exhibition held at the Matsuzakaya department store in Tokyo. It was long considered part of a triptych on the theme of Snow, Moon, and Flowers, and the two other paintings—Moon at Shinagawa and Cherry Blossoms at Yoshiwara—had been available for view for decades at the Freer Gallery of Art and the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, respectively. With this rediscovery, the three paintings could be reunited—and subsequently were at the Freer/Sackler in 2017—for the first time in over a century. Since the rediscovery of Fukagawa in the Snow, all three paintings have come under scrutiny and their attribution to Utamaro disputed. Few topics have become as heated in the field of ukiyo-e studies in recent decades, and arguably none with stakes as high. In this talk, I will begin with an overview of the Freer/Sackler exhibition (for which I was curator), the debates around these paintings, and their relationship to the global art market where artists are marketed as brand names. I will then turn to address issues of authenticity in the works, evaluating the historical and visual evidence. In my closing remarks I will take up the status of these paintings along the slippery continuum between forgery and masterpiece.