Drawings

Preparatory drawings, sketches from which artist work up a detailed composition (and in the process sometimes exhibit verve and spontaneity unseen in their finished works) are a delight for curators and collectors. Of Western art, that is. In the Japanese tradition there has been little awareness of the importance to posterity of preliminary drawings, especially in the world of classic ukiyo-e. This, despite the huge initial efforts artists in that genre must have gone through to work out intricate, formal compositions in a tight, prescribed format. With the very notable exception of the Edo artist Kuniyoshi (1797-1861), for whom preliminary studies for some of his 15,000 designs (sic!) survive, there exist today precious few drawings by ukiyo-e school artists.