Maekawa Senpan: Portrait of a Kyoto-area Woman in Traditional Workwear

Artist: Maekawa Senpan (1888-1960)
Title: Portrait of a Kyoto-area Woman in Traditional Workwear

 Date: Ca. 1940s?  Size: 41 x 31.7 cm

A smiling woman is shown in her Kansai-area farming workwear; she wears a striped top and skirt, tied with a festive flowered belt. She has a loop of cordage tied about her shoulders, and wears a white hair covering and blue neckerchief. Senpan worked as a caricaturist and illustrator before he started creating his own woodblock-printed works  in the 1910s. The charming local attire that the Kyoto-area women wore to work in the fields and markets was very appealing to him. Works like this one convey an optimistic cheerfulness, as well as a subtle longing for the disappearing traditions of the past. This work is unusual as it is quite large and shows a woman from the back; her expression is appealingly  confident. This dealer could find no other examples of this work in an online search. Scarce.

The artist achieved Western recognition through inclusion in Oliver Statler's Modern Japanese Prints: An Art Reborn (1956) and James Michener's portfolio and book The Modern Japanese Print. An Appreciation (1962).  He "was one of the great personalities of twentieth-century Japanese prints, a man of notable independence, and a political radical, yet a staunch traditionalist and supporter of Japanese folk life and customs."

Condition: Excellent impression and color; good condition. The paper is very soft and has some wrinkles as well as minor damage near edges and some hinging remnants, verso.  Signature: Maekawa Senpan in orange stamp

SKU: MKS001