AN EXQUISITE SERIES OF COLOR WOODBLOCK PRINTS OF ORCHIDS FROM EARLY POSTWAR JAPAN

摘要

Capturing the beauty and wonder of orchids through color painting has produced some enduring images of botanical art as well as graphical sources of information useful for plant study and identification. Color botanical illustration of orchids using the black-lithographic/hand-color-painting techniques has a long history dating as far back as the 18th century. Later chfomolithographic and other true color printing methods in Europe and Britain date roughly from the I860's. A host of recent scientificand popular books in English on orchids have been graced by modern color prints of striking watercolor paintings by such American artists as Marion Sheehan, Harry Zelenko, Carol Woodin, Angela Mirro, and many others (see Further Reading...). Color botanical illustration in Japan took a different path by using traditional woodblock printing techniques borrowed from China that were further developed in Japan from about 1765 to 1900. In the century between about 1765 to about 1865, this was arguably the finest true multicolor printing in the world. Some of the best examples of orchid botanical art came later in Japan during the shin hanga or "new prints" era (1920-1960) using these traditional methods.