Description
Nishinomiya-shi Otani Kinen Bijutsukan, Published 1980. Wraps, unpaginated; 24 x 26 cm; text in Japanese; illustrated with 187 plates in color and black-and-white.
Rare, out-of-print & unusual books · Since 1997
112
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Catalog notes
Condition & notes
In Very Good condition. Brown textured paper covers with French flaps, gold lettering on front cover and spine. Mild shelf and edge wear, fading along edges and spine. Binding tight. Adhesive from the binding has seeped onto the title page, lifting a thin layer from the verso of the front free endpaper along the edge near the spine and at a small spot in the lower corner. Museum director's business card affixed to the title page. Pages otherwise clean and unmarked. Errata slip laid in. Collection catalogue of the Otani Memorial Art Museum in Nishinomiya, Hyogo Prefecture, published September 1980, with 187 plates covering modern nihonga, Western-style Japanese painting, nineteenth and twentieth century French painting, sculpture and prints. The collection came to the city in 1971 from Otani Takejiro, president of the carbon and graphite electrode maker Showa Denkyoku, who handed over his residence, its garden and his pictures together; the museum opened on the site in November 1972. Color plates include two Uemura Shoen paintings, Autumn Attire of 1936 and Firefly of 1943, along with Tomioka Tessai, Yasui Sotaro, Okamoto Taro, Oka Shikanosuke and Koiso Ryohei. At plate 124 is a Sleeping Woman Mower catalogued here as attributed to Courbet; the museum now gives it as Courbet's copy after Jean-Francois de Troy, out of the Matsukata Collection. The print section is the unusual part, recording medium and edition size for printmakers then still working: Hiwasaki Takao's wood engraving Jizaiken of 1978 in an edition of 60, with Sakazume Atsuo, Taga Shin, Karasawa Hitoshi, Takayanagi Yutaka and Yoshida Hodaka of the Yoshida printmaking family. A closing table lists every special exhibition the museum mounted from 1973 to 1980, including the first showings of the Bologna International Picture Book Illustration Exhibition, which Otani has hosted annually since 1978 and still hosts, the longest run of any venue outside Italy. A second volume followed in 1986. No English-language catalogue of this collection has been published; WorldCat records three holding libraries, among them the Harvard Fine Arts Library and SOAS, University of London (OCLC 122856748).