The Ladies' Graphic: Various Prints

Prints in Collection

Prints shown as mounted on their original page for reference only as they are not part of the Lavenberg Collection. 

Profiles of the Artists

Ishihara Tamakichi 石原玉吉 (active 1922–1943), painter, illustrator, print and book designer, and editor. He entered the Western Painting Department of the Tokyo School of Fine Arts in 1912. Active as an illustrator by 1922, he contributed woodblock and offset covers, illustrations, and designs to Fujin Gurafu 婦人グラフ from its early years. He joined Fröbel-kan in 1930 and subsequently worked as an editor and illustrator of Kindā Bukku キンダーブック, including the innovative 1935 issue Kawa カハ. His documented work extends through at least 1943.

Fukiya Kōji 蕗谷虹児 (1898–1979), painter, illustrator, poet, and designer. Born Fukiya Kazuo 蕗谷一男 in Shibata, Niigata Prefecture, he studied Japanese painting as a teenage apprentice to Otake Chikuha 尾竹竹坡. With the encouragement of Takehisa Yumeji, he began illustrating Shōjo Gahō 少女画報 in 1920 and soon became one of the leading artists of Taishō- and early Shōwa-period girls’ and women’s magazines. He also contributed to Fujin Gurafu 婦人グラフ, including the multicolor woodblock illustration “Sanjō” 山上 (“On the Mountain”) for the July 1924 issue. In 1925 he went to Paris, where his paintings were accepted by the spring and autumn salons and he associated with Fujita Tsuguharu. Returning to Japan in 1929, he resumed illustration work, incorporating a more modern, Paris-influenced style. He was also a successful poet, best remembered as the lyricist of the children’s song “Hanayome Ningyō” 花嫁人形 (“The Bride Doll”), and later worked extensively in children’s books and animation. He died on May 6, 1979, aged eighty. 

Takehisa Yumeji 竹久夢二  (1884-1934), was the leading figure in the Taishō Romanticism movement which combined Western romanticism with native Japanese styles during the Taishō Period (1912-1926).  He was a painter, writer, poet, bookbinder and illustrator whose drawings of women with thin bodies and large eyes filled with melancholy were known as "Yumeji bijin-ga".  During the height of his popularity he was called the “modern Utamaro” and the Japanese “Toulouse-Lautrec and Edvard Munch”.  His prints epitomized the relationship between popular art and the woodblock.