Yoshitaki Utagawa (fl c. 1850) Studied under Yoshimune. Worked in Tokyo and Osaka, but is known as the leading designer of actor prints in Osaka. Won many prizes. He was a member of the Kamagata-e school. He mainly did the full figure in his actor prints.
Yoshitaki, one of the leading Osaka artist, was the son of the paste merchant. His earliest prints were published when he had barely entered his teens. By the time he was twenty, he had firmly estabished himself as the leading theatrical protraitist in Osaka, a position that he held for at least twenty years. His son, Kawasaki Kyosen, wrote an interesting article on his father´s practice as an artist. It shows the tremendous pressure Yoshitaki and his comtemporaries worked under, and enables us to understand the conditions that led to the decline of actor-print design in the second half of the nineteenth century.
