Artist: Hashiguchi Goyō
Medium: Original Japanese Woodblock Print
Series Title: Beauties
Edition: First State
Date: 1918
Publisher: The Artist - Privately Published
Reference No.: The Female Image: Cat. #13
Size: 21 -3/4 × 15 -1/4 "
Condition: Very fine, with faint mica loss
Notes:
"Woman Applying Makeup" is the first of only seven beauty prints published during Goyō’s lifetime. The original blocks and surviving print inventory of Goyo's small output were all destroyed in the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake and are now very scarce.
Goyō’s woodblock printed images of women represent a bridge—of both techniques and aesthetics—between ukiyo-e prints of the Edo period (1615–1868) and shin hanga of the modern era. All of his female subjects are known to be geishas or waitresses in high-class restaurants or tea houses, and hence professional beauties. Goyō attempted to combine what he considered the best elements of three ukiyo-e masters he most admired: Suzuki Harunobu (1724–1770), for his evocative use of color; Torii Kiyonaga (1752–1815), for his superlative sense of composition; and Kitagawa Utamaro (1754–1806), for the quality of his design and his use of silvery mica grounds. Moreover, women at their toilette was a quintessential Utamaro theme and evokes the works of that artist.