right|thumb|225px|"Mandarin Ducks" by [[Hiroshige, digitally restored.]]
The Utagawa school () was one of the main schools of ukiyo-e, founded by Utagawa Toyoharu. It was the largest ukiyo-e school of its period. The main styles were bijin-ga (beautiful women) and uki-e (perspective picture). His pupil, Toyokuni I, took over after Toyoharu's death and led the group to become the most famous and powerful woodblock print school for the remainder of the 19th century.
Hiroshige, Kunisada, Kuniyoshi and Yoshitoshi were Utagawa students. The school became so successful and well known that today more than half of all surviving ukiyo-e prints are from it.
Founder Toyoharu adopted Western-style deep perspective, an innovation in Japanese art. His immediate followers, Utagawa Toyohiro and Toyokuni adopted bolder, more sensuous styles than Toyoharu and specialized in different genres — Toyohiro in landscapes and Toyokuni in kabuki actor prints. Later artists in the school specialized in other genres, such as warrior prints and mythic parodies.
Utagawa school and inherited art-names
It was a Japanese custom for successful apprentices to take the names of their masters. The “Tatsunori no Maru” crest of the same shape with an added line, was used only by the master of Muneya and his workers. The next master was decided at a convention of the very large Utagawa Ichimon family. The master was mainly decided by personality and their Ukiyo-e skills. However, the higher the rank, the better chance that they would be chosen. There were gifts such as crests from the shogunate in the house using this family crest. Utagawa Kazumon did not only pay attention to the aesthetic of the picture, but also tried to maintain a close relationship with the masses, calling himself “painter”.
Shita-e
Shita-e drawings are still used in the present time, with rough sketches and more refined brush paintings, on different kinds of paper with and without corrections, depending on the artist. Moreover, since the final drawing will be carved away, the drawings that would remain would be either sketches or copies of the final shita-e. It is still uncertain who produced the final shita-e, however the clues that remain are the series of sketches and corrections in red ink. More research remains to be done in this area, yet one reason for the vast success of the Utagawa School and its ability to support so many artists was the studio setup of printmaking in the nineteenth century. Paradoxically, the focus on a limited number of great printmakers of the day actually increased their standing and sales, and so supported the pupils beneath them.