TAKEHISA YUMEJI • Η Χορεύτρια της Ασακούσα • Ιαπωνική ξυλογραφία - Ιαπωνία - 20th century

Artist: Takehisa Yumeji (竹久夢二, 1884–1934)
Title: Asakusa no Odoriko — The Dancer of Asakusa
Series: 竹久夢二木版画集 — A Collection of Takehisa Yumeji's Pictures in Woodblock Print
Technique: Woodblock print (mokuhanga), polychrome with soft bokashi shading
Date: c. 1978–1980 (after an early-20th-century Taishō painting design)
Publisher: Kyoto Hanga-in (京都版画院)
Format: Large format — ca. 45.9 x 34.6 cm
Signature & Seals: Title inscribed and Yumeji signature with red seal at lower left; series title and publisher seal (京都版画院版) in the margins; carver and printer seals at left
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IMPRESSION & COLOUR

A clean impression with excellent colours; the muted palette reads softly and clearly.

PAPER & CONDITION

Excellent. The sheet is intact.
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The Scene — Between Dances

A dancer sits low on the floor in a loose rose kimono, the long skirts and the black, gold-striped obi spilling out around her. She has turned at the waist, one bare arm thrown out in a slow, deliberate line, her face inclined and her gaze following the gesture — a movement from a dance, or the memory of one, performed for no audience. A gilded folding fan lies open on the ground before her, and a verse in the artist's own cursive hand fills the space above. It is a quiet, intimate image of a working entertainer in an unguarded moment, drawn with all the languid grace of "Yumeji-style" beauty.

The touches of gold — in the fan and along the dark obi — lift the warm pinks and give the design its understated richness, while the sweep of the extended arm carries the whole composition.
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The Series

Between roughly 1978 and 1980 the Kyoto publisher Kyoto Hanga-in (京都版画院) issued a set of twenty large-format woodblock prints drawn from Takehisa Yumeji's designs, carefully printed to capture the subtle colours and delicate shading of his original illustrations. Each sheet carries the series title and the publisher's information in the margin. This example arrives in its original printed folder.
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Takehisa Yumeji — Poet of the Taishō Beauty

Takehisa Yumeji (1884–1934) was the leading artist-illustrator of Japan's Taishō era, and a poet and songwriter besides. His romantic portraits of slender, languid young women — drawn with expressive line and a wistful, almost childlike air — were enormously popular, and he designed prints, covers, and illustrations for newspapers, women's magazines, and books. The look became known simply as "Yumeji-style" beauty.

There was little interest in his work abroad during his lifetime, but in the decades since his death Yumeji's images have been keenly sought by collectors. A museum devoted to him stands in Okayama, his birthplace.