Artist: Ogata Gekkō 尾形月耕 (1859–1920) Title (from the English cartouche on the sheet): Sawagashira Unosuke Defeating (the) Enemy with His Sick Body Series: Seishin Bidan Meiyo Kagami 征清美談 名譽鑑 — "Beautiful Tales of the Qing Campaign: Mirror of Honour" Date: Meiji 28 (1895) Publisher: Yokoyama Ryōhachi 横山良八, Nihonbashi-ku, Bakurochō 1-chōme 4-banchi, Tokyo Signature: Gekkō 月耕, with red artist's seal lower right Format: Ōban tate-e, nishiki-e ca. 36*24 cm ---------------------------------------------------------------- Condition Impression & Colours: A strong, well-preserved impression with good colour saturation throughout. Paper: Very good. Minor toning and minor soiling at the top. Please check the images! ------------------------------------------------------- About the print Gekkō's Seishin Bidan Meiyo Kagami was issued by Yokoyama Ryōhachi across 1894–95, while the First Sino-Japanese War was still being fought. Gekkō was among the artists whose work kept the Japanese public informed about the progress of the naval and land campaigns, and a number of his war images appeared in the Seishin Bidan publications of Yokoyama Ryōhachi. Each design isolates a single named episode of individual conduct rather than a mass battle scene, and carries a text panel in Japanese with an English translation printed beneath — an unusual bilingual feature that reflects the international attention the war attracted, and one that makes the series immediately legible to Western collectors. Sheets from this series appear on the market considerably less often than Gekkō's war triptychs, and complete runs are rare in private hands. Impressions are held at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria and, for other designs in the series, at the Minneapolis Institute of Art.