Englishmen: One Standing, One Sketching

This woodblock print (nishiki-e), ink and color on paper, dated the 11th month of 1860 and held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art (accession number 2007.49.239), is a single ōban Yokohama-e by Yoshimori depicting two Englishmen in the foreign settlement at Yokohama, one standing and one seated at his sketching paper. The image measures 37.5 by 25.1 cm and treats its subjects with the careful ethnographic attentiveness that characterizes the best of Yoshimori's Bakumatsu Yokohama-e: the men's frock coats, top hats, beards, and drawing equipment are observed in detail, while their faces carry the slightly exaggerated features that Japanese designers used to mark foreignness for their viewers. The presence of a Western artist sketching at Yokohama belongs to the network of visual exchange that connected Japan to the West in the early treaty-port years — Yokohama hosted a small but active community of foreign artists in the 1860s, including the British Charles Wirgman, founder of The Japan Punch, and the figure of the sketching foreigner became a frequent character in Yokohama-e. The print is signed Yoshimori ga and bears the censor's seal of the 11th month of 1860. Lieberman.