Woman at the Bath

A woman stands at her bath, water to her thighs, wringing a cloth — the print that began shin-hanga: the first bijin design Watanabe Shōzaburō published under his revival of the old publisher–carver–printer workshop. Ukiyo-e as a living workshop craft had died with the nineteenth century. Watanabe wagered it could be reborn with new designers, and commissioned Goyō — a painter and book designer — to prove it. This sheet is the wager. The figure is drawn with almost no interior shading; everything depends on the carved line and the printer’s wiped tone. Where the water meets the skin, a single boundary does the work of a Western painter’s whole palette. “An old craft does not die while one hand still remembers it.”

Maker

Hashiguchi Goyō

Date

1915

Medium of the original

Woodblock print; ink and color on paper

Rights

Cleared for print

Catalogue number

PA-00422