184. Hokuba (Japanese, circa 1838-1855)

Woman and Baby.
Ink on rice paper.
10-3/4" x 7-5/8".

Formerly in the collection of Friedrich Succo, Germany.

This drawing as well as the following four lots are mostly comical drawings now generally attributed to Hokuba, a favorite pupil of Hokusai. He worked for a private clientele at Osaka from the late 1830s until his death in the mid-1850s. Hokuba was one of the two 19th-century Japanese artists able to make a full-time living on his black-and-white work.

The artist often accompanied these iimages, as is the case in the present five lots, with comic poems of his own composition. The former owner of these drawings, the distinguished German orientalist Dr. Friedrich Succo, pencilled in German translations of some of Hokuba's Japanese characters.

Succo always insisted that these back-and-white ink drawings were by Hokusai. As a result, the later owners long held the collection off the market hoping to verify Succo's attribution. In the mid 1990s, the collection was purchased as a whole by a London dealer, from whom the present owner acquired selected sheets.

400/600     SOLD: $258.75

Condition: small binding holes right edge, slight tear at bottom.