Kôgyô - Kissing lovers
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Terasaki (Terazaki) Kôgyô (1866-1919) ascribed to

Kissing lovers in front of a sliding door decorated with pine trees; in the background a Tokonoma niche with a scroll and a small incense burner.

Series: Izumo no Chigiri (The Promises of Izumo)

Date: about 1899

Size: Chûban, 18 x 24,5 cm (size of the woodblock)

Perfect impression and colours, printed with mica and metal pigments, with glossy overprint. Not mounted. Weak vertical centrefold, just a few tiny creases at margins, pigments in the kimono of the woman a little bit oxidized. Nice condition.

Compare Hayashi / Lane, Strangers in Paradise. The Foreign Image in Japanese Art and Shunga, Tokyo, 1998, p 72, 134, here described as chromolithograph (?).

Regarding our investigations up to now, this shunga series, already very popular at its time of publication, was published in several differing editions (with different texts, colours, patterns etc.). The relations of the different editions still wait for a comparative evaluation. The woodblock prints of our edition, published at the given time, are worked out very skilfully in detail and printed very luxuriously.

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