Portrait of Lady Lilian

The Western title and name set this portrait apart from the bulk of Hiratsuka's output, which centers on Japanese architecture, landscape, and botanical subject matter. Lady Lilian reads as a specific Western sitter rather than a generic figure, suggesting a commissioned portrait or a print made during or after one of his international engagements; Hiratsuka spent extended periods in the United States from the 1960s onward and exhibited internationally throughout his career. Before turning to woodblock he had trained in Western-style painting (yoga), and the portrait genre, uncommon in his catalogue, draws on that earlier formation. Carved in his characteristic bold black-and-white idiom, the print would render likeness through the cut of the block rather than through the modeled light-and-shadow of Western academic portraiture, producing a figure mediated equally by yoga training and sosaku-hanga technique.