Spring Sale of Katsukawa Shunsen

Gallery One - Katsukawa Shunsen Kakemono Prints

Toshidama Gallery is delighted to be showing a spring collection of kakemono-e by Katsukawa Shunsen (1762 - 1830), an ukiyo-e artist from the early part of the 19th century, who specialised in "pictures of beautiful women" or bijin-ga. Designed to be pasted onto scrolls and displayed in the niches between pillars in the houses of wealthy Japanese samurai class art collectors, vertical diptychs (kakemono) such as these are frequently in very poor condition, owing to soot from the oil lamps used to illuminate them. We are fortunate to be showing such well-preserved examples; in particular the image of the Courtesan with a Battledore and Flight, is in pristine condition, as fresh as the day it was printed, its delicate vegetable dyes glowing and undimmed.

The five vertical bijin prints are all of women,  who would have occupied that place in Japanese culture at the turn of the 19th century which is so hard to define. Oiran were courtesans, but often had power and wealth of their own, and set the fashion for the wives of the ruling elite. Later in the century, the depiction of women would develop a more life-like quality; here they are still looking back to the idealised, attenuated beauties of the 18th centuries, albeit with markers of the sexual nature of their position, in the form of the roll of tissue held in the mouth of the Courtesan Wearing an Obi with a Design of Chrysanthemums.

We hope you will enjoy browsing these pictures of beautiful women, and there is an essay on the subject of scrolls in Japanese art at our Wordpress Blog with further information.