Japanese Prints

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68 294 294. [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
Henry Sotheran Limited 69 paper, and working up the colours to the desired brilliancy. In 1829, writing in his Art of drawing and colouring from nature, the drawing-master nathaniel Whittock described Oriental tinting as a method “now in general practice” and useful for “persons unacquainted with drawing.” related to the American technique of “theorem painting,” the technique produced splendid results: most satisfying to amateurs, it was largely practiced by women, during the period “when painting in watercolours was a necessary accomplishment of every young lady who aspired to elegance and taste” (Hardie, English coloured Books, p. 123). The approximate date of this unique album derives from the watermark of the manuscript list of flowers bound in at front, which is dated 1828. 295
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Symbolism in Japanese Prints
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Japanese Prints

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