OTA SABURO.

Asagiri [Morning Mist].

Tokyo, 1912. 2 vols. 39, 38ff. 70 full-page color prints. Orig. dec. wraps., stitched, with color prints on each cover (forming a diptych when the two volumes are aligned). Later fitted cloth case (ties with ivory clasps). We quote at length from Jack Hillier’s discussion in “The Art of the Japanese Book”:“Ota Saburo was a protégé of an artist who has been called ‘the father of oil painting in Japan’ and was one of those instrumental in introducing and fostering Impressionism. His name was Kuroda Seiki (1866-1924) and he came of patrician family. Sent to Paris in 1884 to study law, he found stronger interest in painting and joined Raphael Collin to study the plein air manner. In 1893 he returned to Japan, and soon after launched his school for inculcating western methods. Like Asai Chu, he served as a war correspondent covering the Sino-Japanese conflict. He never achieved major status as an artist himself and designed few prints, but he proved a good teacher and set many of the Taisho artists on the road to westernism. Ota Saburo was one of the most original, and is known by a few fine broadsheets that only fail to qualify as sosaku hanga in that they were not cut and printed by the artist. He also compiled a book which, under the title Asagiri, ‘Morning Mist,’ contains a series of small colour prints of astonishing invention and charm, a distinguishing feature being the front covers of the two volumes, which combine to form a diptych. Although Ota has taken two figures in dress and hairstyles of the Genroku era, the diptych is anything but a period piece, and shows Ota’s truly modern style, the kimono and a traditional theme disguising the new western approach and leading to the kind of piquant hybrid that is one of the delights of this transitional period.There is some doubt as to whether the pictures in Asagiri are entirely woodblock-printed. About this date, we have it on the authority of printers of the period, it was sometimes the practice to combine lithography with woodblock, normally lithography being used for the text and the picture outlines in sumi, and woodblocks for the colours. It is not always easy to identify instances of such mixed methods, and the colophons of books rarely specify the printing media, but it is difficult not to believe that the text and outlines in Asagiri are printed by lithography, though the colours give ample evidence, both from the impression left by the edges of some blocks, and from the marks of the printer’s baren, that they were printed from woodblocks.” A little light wear to the covers; very infrequent pale foxing; a clean and crisp, attractive copy.

• USD 950.00 > other currencies
• ordernr.: B06854-1

• bookseller: Ars Libri Ltd. (USA)