European Woman

By skillfully expressing the folds of a dress and the shadows of a woman's face using shades of black ink, and by effectively applying light vermilion to the lips and other parts of the body, this ink painting evokes a high level of elegance and seductiveness.
　Ishikawa Tairô was a literary figure from the late 18th to the early 19th century. He was stationed in Osaka once every six years in the role of "Ôban," and often visited Kimura Kenkado. In a Tirô's letter addressed to Kenkado in 1801, there is the inscription: "I have recently finished the painting you requested". The large, beautiful Dutch signature "Tafel Berg" was written by Tairô from 1800 to 1804, and the literary seal "Kenkado wrote" is stamped on the part of the mounting of this ink painting, thus confirming that this painting is an artwork presented by Tairô at the request of Kimura Kenkado.

Recent research (see "Kokka" No.1498, 2020) has revealed the existence of a British mezzotint print closely resembling this Japanese ink painting: in a series of prints entitled "Rural Life" produced in the mid-18th century (original work by Philippe Mercier), there is a young female figure in a pose similar to that of the Tairô's work, wearing a hat in the same shape, holding a distaff wrapped with wool, and sprouting a thread with both hands. This British print printed in a copperplate technique of mezzotint, which was popular in England at the time as a technique for reproducing paintings, to create a three-dimensional and shading effects reminiscent of a photograph. In this work, Ishikawa Tairô attempted to match the cutting-edge tonal expression of Western prints with the traditional ink technique of the East.