Late summer

This second Late summer is likely a companion or variant impression to the print of the same title, a practice consistent with Shimura Tatsumi's habit of producing paired or alternate compositions on a single seasonal theme. The subject would again be a kimono-clad woman in the closing weeks of summer, a moment associated in the bijin-ga tradition with cooling fans, light unlined kimono (hitoe), and the tucked, inward posture of a body easing out of heat. As with much of Shimura's mature work, the composition tends to crop the figure tightly so that line, hairline, and the textile pattern do the descriptive work, with the ground left as flat washi or a soft bokashi wash. The subdued palette and absence of narrative incident place the print within the late shin-hanga and post-shin-hanga current in which Shimura worked from the 1950s onward, treating bijin-ga less as genre illustration than as a study of stillness and seasonal mood.