Dreaming Of camelias

Dreaming of Camelias pairs a female figure with the tsubaki, a flower long associated in Japanese visual culture with both refined beauty and the suddenness of its falling bloom. The title's reference to dreaming places the print within Saito Kaoru's interest in interior, suspended states — a sensibility also evident in his Tale of Genji mezzotints, which depict literary heroines absorbed in private moments. Mezzotint suits this subject because the technique can register a half-closed eye, the soft weight of hair against a temple, and the curving petal of a camellia within a single tonal continuum, without recourse to outline. Saito would have rocked the plate to a uniform burr, then scraped and burnished selectively to release the figure and the flowers from the surrounding darkness. The print's intimate scale and quiet psychological tenor situate it within his broader project of translating the bijin-ga and Genji traditions into intaglio form, a project he pursued from the late 1960s onward as one of Japan's leading mezzotint specialists alongside Hamaguchi Yozo.