Six nineteenth-century pen and ink sketches, drawn on five sheets by an unidentified Japanese artist, were generously donated to the Graphic Arts Collection by Alfred Bush, former curator of the Princeton Collections of Western Americana.

While they are unsigned, a potential attribution has been suggested comparing the lines to those of Utagawa Kunisada (1786-1865), also known as Utagawa Toyokuni III. Similar preparatory drawings (shita-e) can be found in the collection with the artist seal (Permanent Link https://catalog.princeton.edu/catalog/10643023).

Note the second drawings of the face pasted on top of the first and the elaborate tattoos on this running warrior.

This gift comes at the same time as the sad news that Yoshiaki Shimizu, the Marquand Professor of Art and Archaeology, Emeritus, and a renowned scholar of Japanese art history, curator and Princeton graduate alumnus, died on January 20, 2021, of lung cancer at home in Portland, Oregon. He was 84. A remembrance is written by Jamie Saxon, Office of Communications, at https://www.princeton.edu/news/2021/02/12/yoshiaki-shimizu-distinguished-scholar-who-transformed-study-japanese-art-and

Professor Shimizu was a close colleague of Gillett Griffin (1928-2016), former curator of Graphic Arts, and a number of Japanese prints came to our collection over the years thanks to their association.