Woman with Letter (文を読む女)

Designer: Miyagawa Issho | Carver: David Bull | Printer: Kenichi Kubota

Paper size: 21cm by 15.5cm | Enlargement | Shipping Code: [M] ? ( Change currency: $ / £ / € )

Price: $ 80.00£ 64.75€ 73.75

   

Description: (from Dave’s notes for his original issue of this print in his Surimono Album #5): "The designer of this print is Miyagawa Issho, one of the followers of the far more famous ukiyo-e painter Miyagawa Choshun. But members of this school never had anything to do with woodblock prints; they were painters of kakemono-e, picture scrolls. I have never seen the original painting from which this was taken; what I do have is a collection of a hundred pictures issued by the Kokkei Shimbun of Osaka in 1909-10. The set of pictures is entitled 'Collection of 100 Artists' Depictions of Beauties', and was issued one sheet at a time over an extended period, being passed out as a 'freebie' to subscribers of the newspaper every two weeks (a custom still common in contemporary Japan, where at least one major newspaper frequently chooses ukiyo-e subjects for their free handouts.)

'Now it is obvious that the 100 artists themselves were not involved in the production of this album (of course most of them were long dead by this time.) It seems that a Meiji-era artist, Shuntei Maeno, was commissioned to produce the 100 designs, based on the work of the original men. He was pretty good at this job of imitation, and most of the pictures are indeed quite recognizable; this is 'Shunsho', this is 'Sukenobu', etc. etc. When inspected by somebody with long experience in the field though, some of the images look a bit 'funny' - there is just 'something' wrong somewhere, even if it is impossible to pin down actually what it is. But in this particular image, he has caught the correct flavour of the Choshun school of painters, and their manner of depicting women with quite marked sensuous overtones.

"The album seems to have been popular, and it was re-published a number of times in the early Taisho period in book form; copies are still frequently seen in the used bookshops in Kanda."

   

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