Comment - Kabuki portrait of a "Beauty at New Year's". She is looking over her shoulder with a slight frown as she delicately adjusts one of her many hairpins. She wears a blue kimono bordered with cherry blossoms and ginkgo leaves, tied with a red brocade obi. A sacred shimenawa rope stretches across the top of the scene, and a cloud-like border separates the figure from blossoming plum trees. Shimenawa ropes (標縄・注連縄・七五三縄, literally "enclosing rope") are lengths of laid rice straw ropes used for ritual purification in Shinto. A red fan-shaped kite with white dots ("Sensu tako", "扇子凧") is flying in the sky. A handsome Osaka design, nicely colored with light bokashi shading. Maybe part of a multiptich (missing title cassette, cut ornament upper right, no publisher seal).
The name of the kabuki actor is within the red cassette center left, the rôle is written in the adjoining rosé cassette (both not read).


Series ~


Artist - see Biography


Signature - Sadahiro (貞廣) lower center right


Publisher -  ~


Image Size - 17.5 X 24.8cm    (6 7/8" x 9 3/4")+ margins as shown)


Condition - single sheet; nishiki-e (cloured woodblock); Vertical ôban (small ôban tate-e);