Hanekawa Wagen
1720s
Research by: Howard A. Link.
Person TypeIndividual
Terms
BiographyWagen (active 1720s) shares his surname with a contemporary, Hanekawa Chinchö, and because his work is rarer than Chinchö's, many writers have acquiesced in the unsupportable hypothesis that he was a pupil of Chinchö. More recently, Richard Lane has discovered an illustrated book signed Chinchö with a flourish after the signature identical to that on the Honolulu print and suggests that Wagen may be no more than a pseudonym of the other artist. The one-half-dozen known prints signed Wagen all seem to date from the 1720s, although the authors of the Buckingham catalogue make the unsupported assertion that he was active from 1716-1735. The publisher's address on a calendar print Wagen designed in 1727 reads "Ukiyo-e jihon ezoshi toiya." This may be one of the earliest uses of the word "ukiyo-e" to mean single-sheet woodblock print.
Research by: Howard A. Link.