Portrait of a Western Woman

In this portrait of an unidentified Western woman, Nakayama Toshitsugu employs traditional Japanese media—ink and light mineral pigments on a hanging silk scroll—with Western painting techniques that create the illusion of three-dimensional space on a flat surface. Toshitsugu studied under Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1797¬–1861) and Tsukioka Yoshitoshi (1839–1892), two artists widely recognized as great geniuses of Japanese ukiyo-e style painting and prints. Ukiyo-e means “pictures of the floating world, ” and the subject matter included leisure activities and idealized, beautiful people. Toshitsugu created works in a variety of media, not only paintings in the ukiyo-e style but also Western-style watercolors, oil paintings, and paintings and drawings based on photographs. Some of his works are known to have been produced specifically for visiting foreigners.