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Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts

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Kusakabe Kimbei

Three Samurai

c. 1880s

On View in Works on Paper Gallery

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Kusakabe Kimbei trained as a photo-colorist and apprentice with European photographers in Japan before founding a studio in Yokohama in 1881 that often sold hand-painted landscape photographs and posed portraiture, often in souvenir albums.

The sitters in Kusakabe’s Three Samurai bear the equipment of Japan’s elite military class, including katana, or long swords, and flexible armor made from pieces of lacquered metal linked with silk cords. Given that the samurai class was abolished after the Meiji restoration of 1868, these men are likely actors or models. Girls Showing the Back Style captures the designs on the kimono and obi sashes of three geisha—professional beauties—or, again, models. Kusakabe exclusively photographed sitters in such traditional clothing, rather than the modern styles many Japanese women had begun to adopt by the 1880s. [Permanent collection label, 2022]

  • Artist Kusakabe Kimbei (Japanese, 1841–1934)
  • Title Three Samurai
  • Date c. 1880s
  • Medium Hand-colored albumen silver print
  • Credit line Gift of Laurie Wilson, Robert Frerck, and family, 2015
  • Object number 470.2015
  • Currently on View Works on Paper Gallery

19th- and 20th-Century Travel Photography
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 11/11/2022

12/10/2015 Received at MLKAM; 12/30/2015 Deed of Gift signed by L. Wilson; 3/31/2016 ACC presentation
Robert Frerck (Chicago, IL)

This artwork record may be incomplete or need refinement. Our staff actively researches the collection and revises records when new information is available. If you have questions or comments about this record, please contact us.

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19th- and 20th-Century Travel Photography

November 11, 2022

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