Yoshitora: England
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Yoshitora: England
Move your mouse over image or click to enlarge
Yoshitora: England
Move your mouse over image or click to enlarge

Utagawa Yoshitora (active c. 1836-1882)

Ladies and gentlemen in western dresses, strolling along the promenade of a city port. Churches and a Palladian-style palace border the shore. Full-fledged sailing ships with English flags are lying at anchor. This print from the early days of the re-opening of Japan to the West after more than 200 years of closure (sakoku) depicts an imaginatively conceived England, composed by the artist after imported pictorial and written sources of the time.

Title: Igirisu-koku (England)

Signature: Yoshitora ga

Publisher: Kagaya Kichibei (Seiseidô), Edo

Date: 1865, 2nd month

Size: Oban triptych, c. 36,6 x 75 cm (overall)

Excellent impression in very good colours. Three separate sheets, untrimmed. Backed. Some minimal soiling and small stains, few unobtrusive folds and creases (flattened). Very few small holes, expertly restored. Overall very nice condition.
A rare triptych. Early state with a colour variant of the ladies’s skirts.
Cf. Metropolitan Museums New York, Inv. No. 2007.49.220a–c.; Art Institute of Chicago, 1926.1769. The print in possession of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1968-165-107a-c shows a later impression.

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