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Sanogawa Ichimatsu III as O-Nayo, a courtezan of Gion Street.
The outer robe is in faded violet with violet and white squares on the collar and cuffs. The under kimono is rose with its squares in red-orange and white. The robe that shows beneath the others is white. The obi is in white and two tones of green. The head cloth and the hair ornament at the back repeat the violet and the red-orange of the two kimono.
The impression exhibited, which is the only one in America, bears a hand-written inscription giving merely the name of the actor, and it has the Wakai and Hayashi Collection seals in the upper right hand corner. It was shown with other fine prints by Sharaku in the notable exhibition held in 1909 by the Fine Art Society of London and is illustrated in the catalogue by Morrison. Two other impressions have been reproduced. The one in the Vignier-Inada Catalogue, number 280, reappears as Rumpf number 25, in Noguchi and in Ukiyo-ye Taika Shūsei, etc. The other was in a Tokyo collection when Kurth reproduced it and was photographed again by Nakata and in a Japanese auction catalogue of 1917. This Tokyo impression must once have belonged to the early enthusiast who inscribed the other Sharaku bust-portraits in his possession as he did this one, with the date of the ninth month of 1794.
Ōban. Dark mica ground. Signed: Tōshūsai Sharaku.
Museum of Fine Arts (Spaulding Collection).
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