Japanese Prints

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294
294. [SINO-JAPANESE WAR, 1894 5.] A Japanese Meiji
print of the Sino-Japanese War, 1894-5. Tokyo, 1895. £250
Oban triptych coloured woodblock print (730 x 380 mm), sometime
joined together, brown discolouration visible along vertical joins
where glue applied, else in very good condition.
A print depicting the aftermath of a land battle on the Liaodong
peninsula. The victorious Japanese stand on a defensive wall,
Japanese flag flying as their trumpeters herald success. It is called
picture of the Second Army occupying Jinzhou castle and was
issued in January Meiji year 28 (A.d. 1895) by the publishers
Kichijiro Inoue who had it engraved by Watanake Yatarou, also
known as Horiyata, an eminent engraver of the Meiji period. The
Liaodong peninsula on which Jinzhou is located was a major battle
site during the conflict. Its capture by the Japanese crippled the
chinese, who after the war were forced to cede it to Japan in the
Treaty of Shimonoseki (17 April 1895).
“By 1894 Japan was ready to prove to the world that her recent
efforts at modernization were more than skin-deep. Ironically, the
best demonstration that she was a fully civilized country was to
wage war. Although brief in duration, lasting less than a year from
August 1894 until May 1895, the Sino-Japanese War galvanized the
entire nation with patriotic fervor and a thirst for territorial
expansion. It also gained her the measure of respect she sought
from Western nations . “The war naturally stimulated documentary
photography and gave rise to a steady stream of illustrated
newspaper articles, but the woodcuts, which for the most part had
only a tenuous basis in fact, provided large-scale, colourful images
that must have satisfied a deep-seated aesthetic impulse at the same
time that they pandered to national pride”
(Meech-pekarik, World of the Meiji print p. 200, 201).
295. STANTON, F.M. Album of watercolour botanical
drawings. [No place, probably england] [ca. 1818-28]. £16,000
folio-sized album, 439 x 355 mm, retrospective half green calf gilt
and contemporary red paper boards, contemporary green calf
lettering piece gilt on front cover, titled “Specimens of Oriental
Tinting,” preserved in modern green cloth folding box; 20 fine
paintings of flowers (ca. 380-395 x 297-315 mm), in watercolour
and bodycolour, all but one with captions in gold ink, 12 signed
“Tinted by f. M. Stanton” and 4 initialed “f.M.S.” Manuscript list
of contents (Latin plant names) on a quarto leaf tipped in at front,
listing 24 plants; the 20 present in the album checked off in later
pencil; fine.
A lovely nineteenth-century album of brilliant watercolour flower
paintings. The flowers include roses, dahlias, peonies and above
all American and other exotic species, including passion flowers,
the Aztec lily (amaryllis formosissima), persian pearl tulip (“Tulipa
Oculis Solis”), camellia Japonica, magnolias, dahlias, Jalap
bindweed (convolvulus Jalapa), and a purple poppy.
Vividly coloured, the original watercolours, presumably produced
by the same artist, are applied on thick wove paper and positively
glow. The stencil technique of “oriental tinting” used to produce
these paintings involved transferring a drawing using tracing or
“oriental” paper to surfaces such as wood, velvet, silk, marble or