TORII KIYONAGA (1752-1815)

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TORII KIYONAGA (1752-1815)
A diptych showing the interior of a womens' bath-house where a new customer carrying a bath-robe has just arrived on the right, another young woman standing behind her wearing a yukata, a mother drying a young child in the foreground, at the back of the room another woman who has just come out of a bath, in the left-hand panel a woman in a yukata wringing out a cloth over a wooden bucket, two other women kneeling on the floor drying themselves, on the far left a woman with a yukata about to leave, behind the wooden panelling the male bath-house attendant attending to his duties; published by Iseya, whose sign appears on the large bucket in the foreground; Vever's collector's seal
Oban diptych: 15 1/8 x 9 15/16in. (38.5 x 25.3cm.) (right) and 15 1/8 x 10¼in. (38.5 x 26.1cm.) (left)

Provenance

Theodore Duret, 1893
Henri Vever Collection

Literature

Jack Hillier, Japanese Prints and Drawings from the Vever Collection (London,1976), no. 373.
Chie Hirano, Kiyonaga: A Study of his Life and Works (Cambridge, Mass., published for the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, by the Harvard University Press, 1939), no. 844, pl. LXIX.

Exhibited

Musée des Arts Decoratifs, Paris, 1911
Ukiyo-e Meisaku 300 Senten Exhibition, Japan, 1975

Special notice

No VAT will be charged on the hammer price, but VAT at 17.5% will be added to the buyer's premium which is invoiced on a VAT inclusive basis.

Lot Essay

There is an interesting extract from the Parisian newspaper, La Liberté, dated February 26th 1893 which notes 'News which will arouse the greatest interest in the Japanese Art world: M. Théodore Duret has just decided to sell his superb collection of Japanese prints and books through the firm of Boussod Valadon et Cie. One of the prints in this collection has been purchased by one of our most passionate Parisian collectors, M. Vever, for 5,000 Francs: a sum which has never been paid before in France for a print.'

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