Woman in Lavender

A woman in a lavender kimono — the color suggesting twilight, the borderland between day and night, the hour when feeling is most acute — embodies the Yumeji-style bijin in one of her quieter, more reflective moods. Lavender in Yumeji's palette is the color of refinement and slight melancholy, cooler than red and warmer than blue, suggesting a feeling that has been distilled by time into something more complex than immediate emotion. The woman in lavender is poised between states, neither in the light nor fully in the dark.