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Hokusai print and ORIGINAL PAINTING?

Posted By: Tim
Posted Date: Mar 03, 2015 (11:13 PM)

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I've been collecting woodblock prints for more than 20 years - not an expert, but can recognize fakes and reprints fairly well.

Recently, I bought a small collection that once belong to Adolphe Leibowitz (1887-1971) who published a couple of books Japanese prints. The collection seems to have also passed through the hands of another collector/author by the initials P.W., but I couldn't find any notes that included the full name of this person.

Anyway, in the collection are two Hokusai renderings of 'The Ghost of Oiwa' from his print series, 100 Ghost Stories.

One is a watercolor and the other a print.

The print is a perfect key block match to the 1830 publishing when compared to the example held by the British Museum (see attached link). Note the bottom left corner is missing coloration, margin runs on the left and top of the sheet, the smoke that is coming out from the left middle of the lantern touches the margin, and the cartouche in the top right corner has 2 eyelets without holes (later edition show eyelet holes). For these reasons, I believe the print to be a very fine 1830 print.

As a side note, the MFA in Boston has several 1831-32 editions of this print that show some slight revisions to the key block...not sure if it is relevant to my questions, but thought it was interesting to note.

Anyway, the watercolor shows several several variances in the rendering when compared to the print, but I suspect that is often the case when a work of art is transformed from watercolor to woodblock print.

The quality of the rending and its provenance suggests to me that it may be the original watercolor that the woodblock was model from. However, I can not rule out that someone has mixed a few erroneous items into the Leibowitz collection before it made it into my hands.

Any thoughts on whom might be able to authenticate the work as a genuine Hokusai would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

Link :British Museum link to Hokusai - Ghost of Oiwa

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