[Up-to-Date Self-Instruction Manual for Painting]

Many full-page woodcut illus. (some color-printed). 23, .5 folding leaves. 8vo, orig. blue wrappers (wrappers rubbed), orig. block-printed title-label, new stitching. From the colophon leaf: Fushimi: Kameya Hanbei 亀屋半兵衛, 1848.




Second edition, and a very rare book (WorldCat locates only the LC copy); the first edition of 1816 is equally rare. This is an uncommon provincial publication, issued in Fushimi, near Kyoto (today absorbed into greater Kyoto City).


This drawing and painting manual teaches the artist the fundamentals of ryakuga-style painting. They are followed by a series of very fine gray- and color-printed illustrations, with notes, on techniques of drawing and painting. The first illustration shows the artist’s tools (various kinds of brushes, inkpots, brush-cleaning bowls, inkwells, ink cakes, paper, and paperweights). The next series shows how to hold the different brushes and achieve certain stroke effects.


This is followed by a series of step-by-step delicate gray- and color-printed illustrations of how to draw various fruits and vegetables, including persimmons, peaches, pears, fiddle ferns, taro roots, eggplants, bamboo shoots, apples, chestnuts, daikon radishes, turnips, gourds, burdock, water chestnuts, matsutake mushrooms, baby ginger, shiitake mushrooms, radish sprouts, bean pods, pomegranates, yuzu, and others.


The penultimate leaf provides a list of 12 colors and instructions on mixing and preparing the colors.


The color printing is very fine and delicate, with much bokashi.


From the colophon leaf, we learn that other volumes were planned, dealing with animals, seafood, plants, and flowers, along with both Japanese and Chinese landscape painting.


Fine copy, preserved in a chitsu.