Tomikichiro Tokuriki, 1902-1999
beauty applying eye make-up
pink ground highlighted with a dusting gold mica on her black polka dot collar, signed Tomi kokusuri (carved and printed by Tomi) and sealed Tomi, self-carved and self-printed by the artist, n.d., ca. 1947
oban tate-e 15 7/8 by 10 1/2 in., 40.3 by 26.6 cm
Tomikichiro Tokuriki was born and raised in Kyoto, the 12th generation in a long family line of artists serving the Honganji Temple. After first studying painting at the Kyoto City School of Fine Arts and Crafts, and the Kyoto City Specialist School of Painting, he entered the atelier of the painter Tsuchida Bakusen in 1928 before switching to woodblock prints the following year. He was a member of several art and print organizations, exhibiting frequently, and was particularly associated with promoting sosaku hanga (self-carved, self-printed 'creative prints') in Kyoto. Before the war he published his prints with Uchida, Unsodo and Kyoto Hanga-in, where sometimes he would handle the carving of the blocks, sometimes he would delegate those tasks to other artisans within the publishing houses. After the war he established the Matsukyu Publishing Company to distribute his own self-carved, self-printed works, as well as that of some of his fellow sosaku-hanga artists and to provide training for carving and printing. He was prolific landscape artist, producing very few figural works. Stylistically this scarce print does bear some affinity to a well-known portrait of the artist' wife from 1947 (variously dated 1935) titled Woman Combing Her Hair.
References:
Shizuya Fujikake, D., Japanese Woodblock Prints, Japan Travel Bureau, 1938, revised and expanded 1949, pp. 108-111 (tipped in color plate, A Woman Combing Her Hair)
Oliver Statler, Modern Japanese Prints, 1956, p. 199 (Woman Combing Her Hair, 1947)
Helen Merritt, Modern Japanese Woodblock Prints, 1990, pp. 88-92
Helen Merritt & Nanako Yamada, Guide to Modern Japanese Woodblock Prints: 1900-1975, 1992, p. 153
Amanda T. Zehnder, Modern Japanese Prints: The Twentieth Century, Carnegie Museum of Art, 2009, p. 174, Seated Buddha, 1949 (for similar signature)
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