Featured Japanese watercolor mother and child. Meiji?

I got this beautiful watercolor a while back. It was described as 19th or 20th. I guess that would be around Meiji if they were right. I couldn’t say from experience if that’s the case though. Would love to hear thoughts on it, mainly era. I have zero clue what the signature says. It would be amazing if anyone can translate that. One of those things I planned to sell and liked it too much after getting it home. It might be time to move on though.

 

very nice..

 

I like Japanese art and this is very desirable.

 

The following image is of an artwork piece which used to be in the Robyn Buntin of Honolulu Gallery, until it closed.

I am not suggesting they are by the same artist, merely that the time period may be the same due to the manner and styling cues are so similar.

Reading your items hand-written wording, I can only make out the top character as being 招. Although I could translate it, by itself would be a meaningless thing to do and would only result in providing a word which may have no significance to the image nor artist. Without the second character the meaning of one character alone is irrelevant.

Unfortunately, I cannot read the second character clearly enough, which is a common problem with hand-written characters.


A late Meiji period (1868-1912) genre scene painting. In the foreground, a mother carries her baby on her back.

 

I can't tell if your image is really the colour I see on my monitor here or if it is just some very warm coloured lighting. I would think it should look more like my attached photo, is this correct when you see it in person?

 

@Asian Fever @Mat haven't seen either of you in a while.


Lovely picture.
Wonder if they had traveling artists. At that time period, the US would have had photographers. Earlier it was traveling painters.
I have no idea how advanced the Japanese culture was at that time period.

Maybe this was a more affluent family that could have a picture painted.
Very nicely done.

 

Thanks so much for providing a comparable piece. That’s helpful! I like the one you posted quite a bit more but still like mine a lot. I’ll try a better photo of the mark but sounds like it’s not so much my photo and more the mark itself. I’ll search for some more comps and see what I can come up with.

 

Thanks! I myself was wondering what the impetus for the painting was. Unfortunately I also have no idea if that was a common service in Japan.

 

I think you were correct. The original photos were taken at night next to/below an upward facing floor lamp. The photo attached here was taken today in natural light.

 

Any chance this helps with the signature at all?