Artist: Migita Toshihide 右田年英 (1863–1925), pupil of Tsukioka Yoshitoshi Series: Bijin jūni sugata 美人十二姿 (Twelve Portraits of Beauties) Title: Shimotsuki 霜月 (The Eleventh Month) - Reading next to a Round Window Format: Ōban tate-e, approx. 36 × 24 cm (sheet with margins) Technique: Woodblock print (nishiki-e), ink and colour on paper Date: 1901 (Meiji 34), date in the margin colophon Publisher: Akiyama Buemon 秋山武右衛門 (Kokkeidō), publisher's seal in the lower left margin Signature: 年英 (Toshihide), with the artist's seal Shisuitei ________________________________________________________ CONDITION Excellent colors, good impression. The paper is clean, firm and subtle with a very light washi backing. Please check the images! ------------------------------------------------------- About the print Shimotsuki is the eleventh month of the old lunar calendar, which falls roughly in December of today's calendar. The name means "frost month" and marks the start of winter, when the first hard frosts set in. Museum and dealer records describe this sheet as a young woman reading in front of a large round window. Impressions are in the British Museum and the Honolulu Museum of Art. Bijin jūni sugata is Toshihide's best-known series of beautiful women. Akiyama Buemon published it in 1901, with one sheet for each month of the year, and each sheet ties a woman to the season of her month. These large, carefully printed ōban sheets come from the last phase of traditional bijin-ga in late Meiji, and they still show the influence of Toshihide's teacher, Yoshitoshi. Toshihide is best known for his prints of the Sino-Japanese and Russo-Japanese Wars and for his book frontispieces (kuchi-e). His prints of beautiful women are much less common, and this series is the main example of that side of his work.