Kitagawa Utamaro II

When the great print designer Utamaro died in 1806, the most valuable thing he left behind may have been his signature. One of his pupils married the master's widow, took over the workshop, and began signing his own beautiful-woman prints with the name Utamaro, so that for years buyers went on receiving new work under a name whose owner was dead.

Collectors now call this second man Utamaro II, and separate his output from the master's mostly by date, since anything signed Utamaro after 1806 is his. He kept the name until about 1820, working in his teacher's manner without ever quite matching it, then signed his later prints Kitagawa Tetsugoro.

He is a genuinely shadowy figure. Even his death is recorded only as 1831, with a question mark, and much of what survives under the Utamaro name from those years is still being sorted between the two hands.