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Lot Essay
This print belonged to the great Parisian jeweler Henri Vever (1854-1943). His red "HV" seal appears in the lower right corner. Vever, who set the standard for excellence for generations of collectors, sold the bulk of his prints in 1919 to the Japanese shipping magnate Matsukata Kojiro (1865-1950)--the first major "homecoming" for Japanese prints after their enormous exodus to Europe and America around the turn of the century. Matsukata's prints are now in the Tokyo National Museum. Vever retained the choicest examples and continued to collect during the 1920s, when fine collections were breaking up after the Great War. In 1974, 400 prints that remained in the Vever Collection were sold publicly at Sotheby's, London, followed by further sales in 1975 and 1977, catalogued by the print scholar Jack Hillier. A selection of about 200 superb prints, including the beauty with a cat, shown here, was held back by the family. In 1997, this last group was also dispersed by Sotheby's, London. Hillier published a lavishly illustrated three-volume book on the collection in 1976.
Ukiyo-e prints are a collaborative effort. Utamaro's first and best-known publisher was Tsutaya Juzaburo, who had a shop at the entrance to the Yoshiwara pleasure quarters on the outskirts of Edo (modern Tokyo). Utamaro lived with and worked for Tsutaya until the publisher's death in 1797. Yamaguchiya Chusuke, who published this print, is one of several publishers Utamaro designed prints for subsequently. Little is known about his personal life, but he began publishing around 1793, and Utamaro was one of his principal artists. His shop was in Nihonbashi in downtown Edo.
Utamaro was a central figure in the literary and artistic world of Edo in the 1780s and 1790s and the premier designer of prints of beautiful women. Needlework is from an untitled series of five scenes of everyday life. The other four are: Shamisen, Reading a Letter, Tengu Mask and Peeling Fruit. Here, a young woman squats indecorously in front of her lacquered needlework box. Her legs are splayed and her bosom bared. She wears a light-blue kimono, red undergarment, and red obi with yellow and white peony decoration. Holding a length of fabric with tie-dye pattern in her teeth and bringing the two sides forward in her hands, she looks down indulgently at her cat playing with the end of the cloth. This may be a humorous allusion to the famous scene in the Tale of Genji in which Genji's wife, the Third Princess, is accidentally exposed to the view of male admirers when her pet darts out from behind her bamboo blinds, causing them to swing open.
The exceptional state of color preservation is a hallmark of this impression. It is extremely rare to find light blue and violet in perfect condition--both are notoriously fugitive pigments. The printer used three shades of purple to suggest the transparency of the thin fabric: the lightest over the woman's white breast and the cat's white body; a deeper shade where it overlaps the blue kimono; and the deepest where it is doubled over or held against the gray background.
The one other known impression of this image is in the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Ukiyo-e prints are a collaborative effort. Utamaro's first and best-known publisher was Tsutaya Juzaburo, who had a shop at the entrance to the Yoshiwara pleasure quarters on the outskirts of Edo (modern Tokyo). Utamaro lived with and worked for Tsutaya until the publisher's death in 1797. Yamaguchiya Chusuke, who published this print, is one of several publishers Utamaro designed prints for subsequently. Little is known about his personal life, but he began publishing around 1793, and Utamaro was one of his principal artists. His shop was in Nihonbashi in downtown Edo.
Utamaro was a central figure in the literary and artistic world of Edo in the 1780s and 1790s and the premier designer of prints of beautiful women. Needlework is from an untitled series of five scenes of everyday life. The other four are: Shamisen, Reading a Letter, Tengu Mask and Peeling Fruit. Here, a young woman squats indecorously in front of her lacquered needlework box. Her legs are splayed and her bosom bared. She wears a light-blue kimono, red undergarment, and red obi with yellow and white peony decoration. Holding a length of fabric with tie-dye pattern in her teeth and bringing the two sides forward in her hands, she looks down indulgently at her cat playing with the end of the cloth. This may be a humorous allusion to the famous scene in the Tale of Genji in which Genji's wife, the Third Princess, is accidentally exposed to the view of male admirers when her pet darts out from behind her bamboo blinds, causing them to swing open.
The exceptional state of color preservation is a hallmark of this impression. It is extremely rare to find light blue and violet in perfect condition--both are notoriously fugitive pigments. The printer used three shades of purple to suggest the transparency of the thin fabric: the lightest over the woman's white breast and the cat's white body; a deeper shade where it overlaps the blue kimono; and the deepest where it is doubled over or held against the gray background.
The one other known impression of this image is in the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.