小土塚英一 • 大原の女性 • 1950年代 • 日本木版画 • - Japan - 20th century

Artist: Kotozuka Eiichi (琴塚英一, 1906–1979)
Title: Ōhara-me (大原女) — "Woman from Ōhara"; carved title at lower left
Publisher: Uchida Bijutsu Shoshi (内田美術書肆), Kyoto — publisher's statement in the left margin and hexagonal Uchida mark below the title
Date: c. 1950s (Shōwa)
Signature: Artist's seal at lower left, beneath the carved title
Format: Ōban tate-e, full untrimmed sheet with deckled edges on all four sides, approx. 45*30cm
Technique: Nishiki-e (colour woodblock) on washi
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Paper & condition

Excellent. Full margins, unfaded, unbacked, no folds or foxing. Minor crease at the bottom right from handling. Please check the images!
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About the print

The Ōhara-me were women from the mountain village of Ōhara, north-east of Kyoto, who walked into the city with firewood, charcoal and brushwood balanced on their heads and sold it street by street. They were a fixture of Kyoto life for centuries and instantly recognisable by their dress, which local tradition traces back to the ladies-in-waiting who followed Kenreimon-in into retreat at Jakkō-in after the Genpei war. Kotozuka gives the full costume: the white headcloth over a padded ring, the indigo kimono, the red patterned sash, the striped wrist covers, the blue kasuri skirt. Her load is the point of the picture — a broad bundle of cut sticks and brushwood, and tucked into it a spray of white flowers, since the Ōhara women brought flowers down to the city as well as fuel.

The design is built on a single strong idea: everything above the neck is horizontal and everything below is vertical, so the bundle reads as genuine weight pressing down on the figure. Against it Kotozuka sets a screen of orange maple, printed loose and flat with no outline, which places the scene in autumn and supplies the only warm colour in a sheet otherwise given over to indigo. The face is handled in his characteristic way — flat cream, thin grey contour, almost no modelling, a single red mouth — closer to poster drawing than to shin-hanga naturalism, which is what separates his figures from the Kyoto work being made around him. Kotozuka trained in Kyoto, was close to Tokuriki Tomikichirō, and in 1948 co-founded Kōryokusha with him. His own sympathies were with sōsaku-hanga; the sheets he designed for Uchida and Unsōdō were carved and printed by professional artisans and were, by his own account, what paid for the self-printed work.