Artist: Hashiguchi Goyō 橋口五葉 (1880-1921)
Title: Woman Applying Powder Makeup 化粧の女 Date:1918
A woman, Nakatani Tsuru 中谷つる, has bared her shoulder to apply powder, her gaze on her hand-mirror and her brush gliding on her white skin. This was Goyo’s first independently published bijin-ga (his first work was published by Watanabe), and he makes a bold statement with its enormous size as well as the focused simplicity of the design and the “tour de force application of engraving and printing technologies” (Hockley). These include the groundbreaking (in shin hanga) silver mica background, embossed gold on the hand-mirror and ring, blindprinting on the collar of the robe and the hair’s-width carving of each hair that comprises the brows, lashes and loosely arranged coiffure. Long considered a masterpiece of shin hanga bijinga, it is rarely found with the carver and printer’s seals, as here, which gives assurance of a lifetime edition. (Takano Shichinosuke and the Printer Somekawa Kanzo). One of the most famous and sought-after beauty images in all of shin hanga, rarely found with these seals and in this condition.
The curator notes on this work on the National Museum of Asian Art website say it best: “The elegance of the model and the graceful drape of her loosely wrapped garment are enhanced by the pearly finish of mica powder printed on the background, a demanding technique characteristic of the finest Japanese prints. Although he faithfully reproduced the artistic quality and the subject matter of eighteenth-century Japanese prints, Goyo's sensitive rendering of volume through line and pattern displays his mastery of European techniques of drawing and painting. The model herself reveals her modernity by wearing a ring, an accessory of clearly foreign origin.”
Condition: Excellent impression, very good color and condition. The background silver mica is not consistent throughout, as inevitably happens with these early, lifetime editions.
References: Allen Hockley editor, The Women of Shin Hanga: The Judith and Joseph Barker Collection of Japanese Prints, 2013, p. 132, pl 20; Amy Newland and Chris Uhlenbeck, Ukiyo-e to Shin Hanga, 1990, p. 215.
Amy Newland Reigle and Hamanaka Shinji, The Female Image, 2000, p. 40, number 14.
Andreas Marks, Seven Masters: 20th Century Japanese Woodblock Prints from the Wells Collection, 2015, p. 50, cat. no. 20.
Stephens, Amy Reigle (ed.): The New Wave: Twentieth Century Japanese Prints from the Robert O. Muller Collection. London & Leiden, p. 127, no. 128.
See Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art, Minneapolis Institute of Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art museum collections.
Signature: Goyô ga with his seal Goyô Size: 53.3 x 38.3 cm
SKU: GOC010K
