Woman burning incense

A second treatment of the woman-and-incense-burner subject, this print indicates Takasawa Keiichi's practice of working through a motif in more than one variant — a habit shared with many sōsaku-hanga artists who used the medium's reproducibility to explore alternative color states, croppings, or poses of a single composition. Differences between the two versions might lie in the orientation of the figure, the height of the koro within the picture plane, or the color register of the kimono and ground. Technically, such prints rely on accurately cut keyblocks for the figure's contour and separate color blocks for skin, garment, and smoke, all printed by baren onto washi. Within the artist's broader body of work, the repetition of the burning-incense subject sits alongside his nudes and hair studies as evidence of an interest in concentrated, single-figure interiors rather than narrative or landscape compositions.