| Method | Painting |
| Artist | [Anonymous] |
| Published | c. 1900 |
| Dimensions | Sheet and image 147 x 205 mm |
| Notes |
A Meiji Era painting of a tamarin monkey attacking a woman, her toppled bucket in the background. The artist Kobayashi Eitaku (1843-1890) created a series of twelve shunga paintings called Nikuhitsu shunga makimonocreateda depcting animals and women. In these painting all of the animals are of enormous size and they may be representations of the Japanese Zodiac. This painting is a copy in reverse of the image of the lion tamarin in Eitaku's series in a different style. The Meiji Era marked the end of the Shoganate, the restoration of the Imperial Family, and the full opening of Japan to the West. As Japan opened it the the Meiji administration sought to bring Japanese societal practices in line with Western standards of morality. These factors had several affects on Meiji shunga output. As Japanese society became more western tastes changed at the same time that artists began to be school in Western styles. Ukiyo-e printmakers no longer produced any prints, but shunga was still being made through the end of the 19th century and into the twentieth. This material was still being produced using deluxe printing methods, but it was stylistically simpler and more often produced as suits of prints and painting rather than in than in book format. Shunga is the term used for the body of erotic imagery produced in Japan from 1600 to 1900. The term shunga means spring pictures, a euphemism for sex, and is one of several names for erotic material produced in Japan. Shunga took different formats: painted hand scrolls, painted books, printed books and albums, and sets of prints which were sometimes sold in wrappers. As prints they are one of the genres of ukiyo-e, or Floating World prints, which also include fukeiga (landscape prints), and bijin-ga (prints of beautiful women). Most of the major ukiyo-e artists produced shunga material at some point during their careers, including Utamaro (who produced more erotic books than non-erotic books), Hokusai, and Hiroshige. Produced at the same time as the introduction of full colour woodblock printing, shunga prints and books were made using the most lavish and complicated printing techniques, including gauffrage, metallic inks, mica, complicated printed patterns, and multicolour printing using a high number of different colours. Although prolific in its number and variety, shunga should be seen as more representative of the ideals of the ukiyo, with its emphasis on mutual pleasure, rather than as an accurate representation of Japanese attitudes and practices of sexuality. Shunga present an invitation to pleasure through the bliss of lovemaking and though largely heteronormative, they portray the full gamut of couplings, married or otherwise, often surrounded by lavish settings and objects of pleasure. Ex. Col.: Peter Darach Condition: Paper remnants on verso from where it as once tipped to another sheet of paper. |
| Framing | unmounted |
| Price | £300.00 |
| Stock ID | 53264 |