Ito Shinsui 深水: After the Rain; Women by Moonlight

Artist: Itō Shinsui 伊東深水
Title: After the Rain

Series: Twelve Sights of Oshima Island  Date: 1938

Scarce wartime design showing Japanese women drawing water by hand from a well by moonlight. This rarely-seen series lands stylistically between Shinui’s pre-earthquake landscape designs and his postwar landscapes. Izu Oshima Island is the largest of the islands that make up the Izu archipelago, and is under the administration of Tokyo, which lies about 100km to the north. It is home to the active volcano Mount Mihara and is famous for its camellia oil production. This scene is timeless in that the women are wearing simple indigo cotton kimonos and are using no electric lights or modern equipment. They silently, almost meditatively, fill their wooden buckets from a simple well and then carry them on their heads in various directions. With the round Watanabe seal bottom left that was in use in the 1940s.

Literature: Tadasu Watanabe, Ito Shinsui: All the Woodblock Prints, 1992, number 18, page 127. Condition: Excellent impression; very good color and condition. Minor hinging remnants, verso and light water spot in upper margin.

Dimensions: 29 x 42.3 cm
Seal: Shinsui  Signature: Shinsui saku

SKU: SNC109S