Nude in a spa

Nude in a Spa belongs to one of Maekawa Senpan's most identifiable subject groups: the bathing figure in a hot-spring setting. Unlike the idealized bijin-ga of Edo-period ukiyo-e, Senpan's nudes are rendered with a frankness and humor that sosaku-hanga critics recognized as distinctively his own. The figure is likely depicted in a moment of self-contained ease — soaking, toweling, or seated at the edge of a bath — with the surrounding architectural elements of the onsen reduced to suggestive flat planes. The print exhibits the characteristic features of Senpan's hand-printed editions: warm flesh tones laid in broad areas, simplified contour lines cut by the artist himself, and the subtle baren marks that authenticate self-printed sosaku-hanga work on washi. Bathing scenes for Senpan were not erotic in the ukiyo-e sense but were instead celebrations of unselfconscious bodily comfort, an outlook that gave his nudes their particular tonal warmth.