being particularly exceptional given his commoner heritage and upbringing. Adopted into the Torii family, Kiyonaga's biological father was the owner of a number of tenements near a fish market; though his family may not have been particularly poor, he was certainly not brought up in an environment of high culture. Meanwhile, contemporary artists of the samurai class, who would be expected to have a better innate sense of the aesthetics and details of aristocratic culture, produced images quite arguably inferior to those of Kiyonaga. The women in Kiyonaga's prints are often described as exceptionally tall, seeming fuller, and more mature than those of his predecessor Harunobu, whose prints often depict women who seem younger and thinner. Though a difference of personal styles accounts for this primarily, it also comes in part from Kiyonaga's use of larger sheets of paper (ōban, rather than chūban or hosoban). Kiyonaga's works broke the mold of many previous artists. A great proportion of Kiyonaga's work is in diptych or triptych form, making the work seem larger and more impressive overall. Due to the large size of his prints many of his works with beautiful women also feature a scenic background illustrated with the Western concept of perspective. His prints are also well known for the variance and richness in colors. Just as Kiyonaga can be said to have replaced the earlier Harunobu as the most popular bijinga artist of his time, so Kiyonaga can be said to have been replaced by Utamaro, whose women are even fuller and more mature than those of the former. Kiyonaga's kabuki prints, depicting scenes on stage and the like, show a great attention to detail, and seek to depict real Kabuki scenes, rather than idealized versions. There is something very plain about much of his depictions, showing that those depicted are in fact actors and not the true idealized characters they represent; however, he did not make the leap to portraying the individual features and personalities of the actors as some other artists (including the Katsukawa school) did. Some scholars label his style as an important intermediary step leading to the bombastic, yet realistic, style of Sharaku. In 1794, when Utamaro became the lead bijin-ga artist, Torii Kiyonaga shifted his artistic focus to surimono, illustrations, and paintings. His last known print dates from 1813, two years before he died. In Philately Kiyonaga’s works have been featured several times in