TAKEHISA YUMEJI • Όρος το χειμώνα • Ιαπωνική ξυλογραφία σε ξύλο - Ιαπωνία - 20th century

Artist: Takehisa Yumeji (竹久夢二, 1884–1934)
Title: Beauty and Plum Blossom
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 delicately printed sheet built almost entirely in soft, unsaturated tones — pale apricot and sage in the woman's robes, set against an ivory ground. The flowering plum branches that frame her on both sides are printed with fine grey-brown linework and touches of warm red-brown at the buds, the white blossoms left in reserve against the toned paper.

PAPER & CONDITION

Excellent. The sheet is intact.
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The Scene

This is an uncommon subject for Yumeji, who is so closely identified with his beauties that his landscapes are easily overlooked. Yet he sketched widely on his travels, and a winter mountain scene of this kind shows the more painterly, atmospheric side of his hand — a point of interest for collectors who know him chiefly through his women figures.
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The Series

This sheet shows Yumeji's signature subject at its most characteristic: the wistful, slender "Yumeji-shiki bijin" — a type modelled in large part on his first wife Tamaki — caught in a quiet moment beneath blossoming plum, a wicker basket cradled in her arms. These images of women with large, melancholy eyes had a major influence on the world of Japanese art, and the pairing of a solitary beauty with ume blossom — one of the most loaded seasonal motifs in Japanese painting, signalling quiet resilience and the first stirrings of spring — sits comfortably within the lyrical, Taishō-romantic mood for which Yumeji remains best known.
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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.