Ladies, Landscapes and Loyal Retainers : Japanese Art from a Private Collection

This volume presents a remarkable collection of Japanese art, a collection rarely seen outside the home of its owner and her family. Much of the collection was formed in Kyoto during a two-year period of American occupation, 1948-50. It was time when the country was suffering from destruction and deprevation, and when an American woman, whose previous collecting experience was limited to first-edition books, found herself drawn to the beauty and elegance of Japanese art. With an instinctive eye for quality and with counsel from a Japanese dealer of impeccable taste and integrity, she selected major, often rare works, a majority of which are woodblock prints from the Edo Period, which flourished from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century.