Description
Important original woodblock print of vertical chuban (中判) format made around 1806 by the famous artist Katsushika Hokusai (葛飾北斎). The print is the number 38 (三十八) of the series “Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido Road” (東海道五十三次) and depicts a bijin (美人) beauty, traveling on horseback, during a stop at the Fujikawa (藤川) station, located in the present-day city of Okazaki (岡崎市), Aichi Prefecture (愛知県).
Hokusai was the author of several series of prints depicting the Tokaido, ie the eastern coastal road that connected Edo (江戸) to Kyoto (京都). The particularity of the “stations” of Hokusai, also visible in the work presented here, is that the main subject is always the travelers: unlike the paradigm of the equally famous prints by Utagawa Hiroshige (歌川広重), Hokusai’s landscape is almost always just a background, decorative and without perspective emphasis, for human activity.
The precious work on Japanese washi paper (和紙), printed by the publisher Iseya Rihei (伊勢屋利兵衛), owner of Kinjudo (錦樹堂), has obvious signs of aging and small ancient restorations on the wormholes.
