Madame Lilian

A portrait identified by a Western given name almost certainly dates from Hiratsuka's American period — he relocated to Washington DC in 1962 and lived there for over thirty years, during which time he produced portraits of friends, patrons, and figures from his adopted city. The title "Madame Lilian" suggests a specific sitter known to the artist rather than a generic type. Following the [sosaku-hanga](/glossary/sosaku-hanga) principle that the artist designs, carves, and prints each work himself, Hiratsuka would have cut the portrait directly into a single block in his signature high-contrast black-and-white technique, with the sitter's features rendered as crisp white lines reserved against fields of dense ink. The treatment owes nothing to the polychromatic [bijin-ga](/glossary/bijin-ga) of the Edo workshops or the [bokashi](/glossary/bokashi)-shaded portraits of [shin-hanga](/glossary/shin-hanga); it belongs instead to a modernist graphic tradition in which the carved line carries the entire weight of likeness. Portraits of this kind document the social network Hiratsuka built around himself in Washington while continuing to apply, without compromise, the formal vocabulary he had refined over four decades in Japan.