Lemon (Holiday Card from Yamanaka, 1956), Shôwa period, dated 1959

This work originated as a holiday card issued by Yamanaka in 1956 but carries a date of 1959, indicating either a later authorized printing or the year a particular impression was pulled from the original plate. Yamanaka, the prominent Japanese art dealer and gallery with operations in New York and Tokyo, commissioned such cards to circulate among clients as promotional gifts, and Hamaguchi's lemon motif—small in scale and immediately legible—suited the format. The mezzotint ground provides the characteristic dark surround against which the fruit glows with concentrated color, a quality that would have translated well at small card dimensions. Despite its functional origin, the impression maintains Hamaguchi's exacting standards for tonal modulation: the lemon's rind is not uniformly yellow but shifts from pale highlight to warmer shadow through incremental degrees of plate burnishing. Works of this type document the commercial relationships sustaining Hamaguchi's Paris career while also tracing how individual images migrated across different printing contexts and years.