UTAMARO, Kitagawa. Album of selected insects. Burlesque poem - Lot 440

Lot n° 440
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50 - 120 EUR
UTAMARO, Kitagawa. Album of selected insects. Burlesque poem - Lot 440
UTAMARO, Kitagawa. Album of selected insects. Burlesque poem competition of myriads of birds. Arles & Paris, Philippe Picquier / Institut national d'histoire de l'art, 2009. 2 in-4 volumes, white recycled paper publisher's boards, accordion-bound, plus explanatory booklet with French translations, in illustrated Japanese-lock slipcase. 43 and 43 pages. The slipcase is slightly soiled. Fine edition reproducing in facsimile two popular masterpieces of Japanese printmaking by Kitagawa Utamaro (1753-1806): Album des insectes choisis and Concours de poèmes burlesques des myriades d'oiseaux, accompanied by some thirty kyôka poems translated and presented by Christophe Marquet. In keeping with the format of the originals, the edition is based on the two albums once owned by couturier and patron Jacques Doucet, considered to be the finest known prints of these works. They are now kept in the library of the Institut national d'histoire de l'art. Between 1788 and 1791, the painter Utamaro, famous for his marvellous prints of courtesans in the pleasure districts, published a trilogy devoted to the animal kingdom, of which these two masterpieces are collected here. Edmond de Goncourt considered them to be Utamaro's best work, and in his biography of the artist, praised the "miraculous perfection of the impressions". Each album is accompanied by some thirty kyôka, the burlesque five-verse poems fashionable in Edo's literary salons at the end of the 18th century. These epigrams, full of puns and allusions, are stylistic exercises in which some fifty poets, famous and unknown, compete to describe their feelings towards courtesans, while featuring insects and birds. In good condition. Rare.
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