Schoolgirls Homeward Bound

Catalog note / 解説

Ikeda Shöen (1888-1917) was one of Mizuno Toshikata’s most prominent female students. Like her teacher, she designed many images for woodblock prints. The series Young Beauties of Layered Mist, published by the well-known publisher Akiyama Buemon, resembles Toshikata’s series The Seasons and their Fashions, a print of which is on display nearby. Both artists were transitional figures between traditional ukiyo-e and the various movements to modernize Japanese painting and prints in the early part of the 20th century, and they show a similar sense of color, line, and composition that continues the aesthetic of the Meiji period (1868-1912). (“Girl Talk: 20th Century Japanese Prints Depicting W…