Utagawa Sadahide
An ukiyo-e artist active from the end of the Edo period into early Meiji. Using the name Gountei, he is known for Yokohama-e depicting the newly opened port of Yokohama and for bird's-eye views that look down on wide stretches of land as if from the air.
Utagawa Sadahide is said to have been born in 1807 (Bunka 4) in Fusa, Shimosa Province (now Abiko, Chiba Prefecture). He became a pupil of the ukiyo-e artist Utagawa Kunisada (later Toyokuni III) and at first worked on beauty prints and on illustrations for gokan, illustrated reading books. Besides Gountei, he used names such as Gyokuransai.
When Yokohama opened as a port in 1859 (Ansei 6), he produced many Yokohama-e showing the lives of foreigners and the bustle of the town, and became the leading artist in the field. He was also skilled at bird's-eye views looking down on whole towns and regions from a height, leaving landscapes with place-name labels written in that can be enjoyed like maps. For the 1867 (Keio 3) Paris Exposition Universelle he submitted works as a representative of ukiyo-e artists.
Around 1868 (Meiji 1) he published the series Famous Places of the Counties of Great Japan, depicting castle towns and famous sights in various regions in bird's-eye views. The year of his death is not clear and is given as the early Meiji period (1870s).
