Shunkyuzu (Images du palais du printemps)

Album of five Japanese erotic prints, mounted on cardboard, anonymous.
Accordion binding, which can be fully unfolded to display all five paintings. Very thick cardboard imitating the rigidity of wood, the prints on paper have been mounted on cardboard. Covered on the upper and lower boards with yellow patterned silk fabric. Old ochre label with manuscript title in India ink. Spotting on the prints
The five prints depict five couples in action in close-up shots, most without furniture or other décor, in the manner of Kuniyoshi for example. The palette uses green, yellow, red and blue. The whole is printed in line, in a rather mannered way, the limbs languid in delicate expressions. The ensemble follows the canons of shunga representation (Japanese erotic prints) with happy and fulfilled characters, with particularly exposed genitals, the male member always turgid and large. The kimonos offer contrasts of colors and patterns (geometric, flowers or leaves). The date of 1890 is only a suggestion, the album may be later, around 1920. This type of collection remained anonymous most of the time due to censorship, it was often given as a wedding gift or intended for foreign visitors at that time. At the beginning of the Meiji era, the attraction for erotic photography supplanted shunga. Some painters specialized in the production of shunga, and it is not uncommon to encounter the same scenes in various collections.