Portrait of a tattooed man

Category

Library Item

Item no

15166

Title

Portrait of a tattooed man

Description

A man stands with his tattooed back to the camera whilst looking over his right shoulder. He is wearing a hachimaki, a white stylized headband with blue dots on it. His tattoo represents a man fighting with a giant snake or dragon.
The photograph has been hand tinted; the artist followed the lines of the original tattoo to colour it. Blue and red paint has been used to highlight the lines of the tattoo and the colouring is rather basic. Only the man's headband and tattoo are coloured. The background is completely neutral.

Artist / maker

von Stillfried-Ratenicz, Franz

Date

1881

Size

14 x 9.5 cm

Type

Photograph

Location

Art and Design Library

This item is part of a collection of prints from the studio of Baron Franz von Stillfried-Ratenicz, an Austrian photographer practising in Japan in the late 1870's. Von Stillfried ran a studio in Yokohama at the same time as his brother Raimund, who was also known as 'Baron Stillfried'. This caused a great deal of confusion with the local residents and visitors to Japan in the Meiji Period, and with art historians today.

This album, which dates from 1879-83, comprises 67 separate mounted prints presented in a lacquerware box. Albums of this kind were popular among foreign tourists, who frequently selected the individual prints they wished to include from the studio's collection. Many of these albumen prints were hand tinted. This was a laborious process for which von Stillfried employed, at the height of his success, a substantial number of Japanese workers.

Tattoos ('irezumi') were a popular symbol of virility in the Edo era (1615-1868) and were usually visible on labourers, palanquin carriers, postmen and firemen. During the Meiji era (1868-1912), the imperial government banned tattoos, considering them a barbaric tradition. At the same time, Western visitors to Japan and in particular sailors started to get tattooed by local artists and thus spread Japanese tattoos to the West.

Nude Japanese men with tattooed backs must have been an impressive sight to Western travellers to Japan. Their pictures were taken by many different photographers, which is why these images are difficult to attribute today. There are two other photographs featuring tattooed men in Henry Dyer's collection; however the colouring of these other pictures is of a much better quality.
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The scene the tattoo depicts may be based on a design by Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1798-1861), a famous print-maker and painter. His series untitled 'One hundred and eight heroes of the popular Suikoden all told', inspired by a famous Chinese tale, served as a model for many tattoos during this period.

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Related subjects

Clothing and dress > Accessories > Tattoos

People > Adults > Men

Places > Asia > Japan