TAMAMURA and others

Japanese landscapes and portrait studies, 1880s

Details

TAMAMURA and others
Japanese landscapes and portrait studies, 1880s
Album containing fifty hand-tinted albumen prints, each approx. 7¾ x 9½ in. or the reverse, the majority titled and numbered in the negatives, mounted one-per-page, elaborate hand-painted borders depicting birds, butterflies, insects and figures in Japanese landscapes, tissue guards, black lacquer boards (heavily worn), gilt onlay depicting flowers and an owl flying above on front cover and a hare pounding rice in a mortar on back cover, g.e., oblong 4to.

Literature

Several of the images correspond to those listed in the Appendix of Terry Bennett's book Early Japanese Images.

Lot Essay

Views around Tokyo, Yokohama, Nikko, Kamakura, Kioto, Nara and Nagasaki; portraits of geisha, musicians, women drinking tea, dancers, women at their toilet, carpenters, acrobats and a group portrait of Ainos.

In the folklore of both China and Japan, the hare is always connected with the Moon, in which the hare is shown busily pounding rice for 'mochi' or rice cake. This legend may be traced to an Indian source.

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