Magenta Cherries

Produced between 1988 and 1991, Magenta Cherries belongs to a late group of color mezzotints in which Hamaguchi pushed his chromatic palette toward heightened saturation. Cherries were among his most enduring subjects—their smooth globular surfaces, specular highlights, and pendant stems offered ideal formal material for exploring the mezzotint's capacity to render spherical light. Here the designation 'magenta' signals a departure from the naturalistic deep red of Bing or Rainier cherries toward a cooler, more violet-tinged hue achieved through selective mixing and careful registration of multiple copper plates. By the late 1980s Hamaguchi was in his late seventies, and his late prints are often read as more concentrated and distilled than his earlier work. The fruits are likely arranged in the spare, counting-rhyme manner found across his cherry compositions—a small cluster, each fruit distinct—with stems providing delicate linear counterpoint to the swelling spherical forms. The white wove paper contributes a specular maximum that no ink layer can surpass, so the brightest highlights are the paper itself, revealed by burnishing the copper plate to a mirror finish.