Woman Holding a Lipstick Brush 紅筆を持てる女

This woodblock print depicts a maiko or apprentice geisha looking in a hand mirror as she lightly applies rouge to her lips. Her glossy black hair, arranged in an updo, is rendered brilliantly with countless lines that vary subtly and give a realistic sense of the individual hairs at the hairline. Her shaped-resist-dyed hair ornament is also depicted precisely; subtle differences in the surface of the woodblock, created with the carver’s knife, express the fabric’s pattern and texture amazingly delicately. The young woman’s obi sash and hand mirror are dark red, while her rouge, lapels, and hair ornament are a somewhat pale cinnabar. The green of the kimono and the blue used in its motifs accent the reds in the print, and especially the rouge featured in the title, making them more bright and clear. What really sets off those colors to great advantage, however, is the beauty of the young woman’s white, almost translucent complexion. Furthermore, the background was printed using the kirazuri technique: applying shiny ground mica, kira, over a plain background, for a striking sheen. The artist who designed this print, Hashiguchi Goyo, began creating illustrations for magazines while studying Western-style painting at the Tokyo Fine Arts School (now Tokyo University of the Arts). He also worked on the design and illustrations for Natsume Soseki’s I Am a Cat and many other books. He used his talents in other aspects of design as well, winning, for instance, first prize in the Mitsukoshi’s advertising contest. Working with the print publisher Watanabe Shozaburo in creating shin hanga, new woodblock prints that applied traditional techniques to new subjects, led to Hashiguchi’s devoting himself to woodblock prints, in which he produced many serene images of women full of great feeling.