Posted by Noel Chiappa (98.166.150.196) on March 24, 2011 at 14:58:44:
In Reply to: Baeutiful sumo Boys! posted by Mikael on March 23, 2011 at 23:01:44:
"The signature seems very close to utamaro´s, but could this be the case?"
Well, it's a bit difficult to be certain, because the image is not very large/high-resolution (especially important when a print is in bad shape, as this one is), but it does _seem_ to be Utamaro.
The first character I am pretty sure is 'uta', and there are not very many artists with that first character, and none of them have second characters that look anything like the second character here. Also, the 'hitsu' looks very much like the way Utamaro wrote it - which is not definitive, of course, but when combined with the 'uta', it is significant.
Noel