Erotic Woodblocks Print ‘Shunga’, Kitagawa Utamaro

Signed: Josaku Meda. 60. Singed on the back: "Paysage humain" N°14 / 7.1960 / Josaku MAEDA / à Paris Exhibitions: Turin (Italy), Gissi Gallery, Collettiv...

Karamono with flower arrangements and rare birds Edo period, 18th century Pair of two-panel folding screens Ink, colors, gofun and gold leaf on paper Each 170 by 165 cm ...

In the pleasure districts, the stringent codes were meant to be forgotten. In this painting, some clients are watching from outside the teahouse, while some are entering, one of them...

The scene is dominated by a plum tree in bloom under which a couple of paradise birds is courting. The screen is crossed by a luxuriant creek, a typical feature of the springtime.  

A pair of six-panel folding screens with peonies and other flowers 19th century Each 72.5 by 241 cm Small and elegant screens with an ideal scene depicting peonies and other flower species...

This pair of screens belongs to a genre of lyrical paintings of flowers, grasses, and other plants that flourished around the middle of the 17th century and became a specialty of the Sôtatsu studio. The use of a rather complex composition of clusters of flowers and the puddling of ink was initiated by Tawaraya Sôtatsu, the founder of the Rimpa School, who was active from 1600 until 1642. The screens are abstract and decorative but there is, at the same time, a keen sense of naturalism not only in the attention to accurate detail but in the profusion of vegetation. The passage of the year is symbolized by the variety of plants that bloom in different seasons. The tarashikomi - here used on leaves, petals and trunks - is a Classic Rinpa technique in which pale black ink or a color is brushed onto an area of a painting and then either darker ink, or the same or a contrasting color, is dropped into the first before it has completely dried, creating an effect of pooled colors with softly blurred edges. Its delicacy, preciousness, and effeminacy are identified with the over-refinement of its patrons, while the vigor, monochromatic discipline, sharp observation, and virile forms of the Kano school are a testament to the vitality of the rising warrior class. The plants are almost all identifiable: in the summer-spring part, you can find wheat, buttercups, irises, begonias, hydrangeas, coral bells...

An antique Japanese Shunga woodblock print in gilt frame depicting a man and a woman making love. Created in Japan, this woodblock print called...

An antique Japanese Shunga woodblock print in gilt frame depicting a man and a woman making love. Created in Japan, this woodblock print called...

An antique Japanese Shunga woodblock print in gilt frame depicting two women making love. Created in Japan, this woodblock print called a Shung...

An antique Japanese Shunga woodblock print in gilt frame depicting a man and a woman making love. Created in Japan, this woodblock print called...

This Meiji-period color woodblock by Toyohara Chikanobu (1838-1912) depicts three elegant female courtiers in traditional dress taking refreshments. Th...

Faces (4 Faces), 1969 Tomio Kinoshita (1923-2014), Japan Woodblock print Paper, pigment, sumi ink Image: 27 high by 18.25 inches wide (68.5 by 46.4 cm) Paper size: 28 high by 19...