Artist Utagawa Kuniyoshi lived from 1797 until 1861. He was one of the last great masters of the Japanese woodblock print. The production of these prints virtually ended by the year 1912. The first Japanese woodblock prints were made at temples and given free to believers. These prints were generally images of deities or sections of sacred sutras. In the home or shop, these prints took the place of paintings and calligraphy, which were too expensive for the common people. These early prints have been largely ignored by collectors and historians, who have instead focused on the secular prints of the Edo period (1600-1870).