Standing Nude

This second standing nude likely presents an alternate pose—turned, in profile, or with weight shifted to one leg—and may pair with the companion print as part of a small studio series. Oda, who learned lithography in his brother's Osaka shop and absorbed the figure work of Toulouse-Lautrec and Bonnard, was familiar with serial nude studies as a print form. The mokuhanga technique translates the painterly nude into discrete color blocks, using the keyblock contour to define the body's silhouette and registering modeling through [bokashi](/glossary/bokashi) alone rather than tonal hatching. The choice of subject, like many sōsaku-hanga nudes of the late 1910s and 1920s, asserts the print's claim to fine-art status by addressing a category historically reserved for oil painting and academic drawing. Compared with the companion print, slight shifts in palette, ground, or scale of the figure register Oda's iterative approach—working a single motif until composition and technique cohere—rather than producing nominally identical impressions for the commercial print market.