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Original Number

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20

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ADDITIONAL NOTES FOR THIS DESIGN

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Currently Documented Edition Signature and Seal Markings:

Edition I:	楽山居	Raku-zan Kyo	+ Seal A	(edition I watermark paper)	(first use of this signature & seal combination in this series)
Edition IIIa:	楽山篁子生	Raku-zan Kou-shi-sei	+ Seal B	(edition II watermark paper)
Edition IIIb:	三拙庵楽山	San Setsu An Raku-zan	+ Seal B	(edition II watermark paper)	(in Foster Booklet)

[For illustration of seals listed by seal code letter, see the Seals article. For edition characteristics applicable to this series as a whole, see the Edition article.]

Design History:
This woodblock print was produced from an original painting on silk dating from the late 1920s whose current location is unknown. The indentification of this design as number 20 is original to Rakusan who published the print as the twentieth design in his series of one hundred woodblock prints called 楽山花鳥畫譜, Rakuzan Kachou Gafu, lit. 'Rakusan's Flower and Bird Print Series'.

Edition I: The first printing run of about two hundred copies of 20 was completed and the design published in February 1930 in installment ten (of fifty). (The exact printing and publication dates are unknown since no copies of the installment ten delivery documents have yet been located.) At least one (and possibly more) additional full print runs of edition I of 20 were produced before mid 1933 when the series was completed and edition I printing ceased. As a result, all but a handfull of the documented copies of 20 come from edition I printings, including the different example copies illustrated at top and below left.

The delivery documents for installments five and six reveal that Rakusan encountered repeated problems in publishing 20, and several unplanned delays ensued which eventually amounted to five months after the first preview announcement (instead of the usual one month).

In the documents for installment five sent out on September 21, 1929 Rakusan announced that 20 would be published in October (the following month) in installment six as the twelfth design. Installment five was the first of the installments to include design preview prints as advertising, and Rakusan included 20alt, a woodblock print of an alternate sketch of the same design subject as the intended twelfth design (see Related Designs below). However, 20 would not be ready in time, and at the last minute a different design (12) was substituted and published in installment six as the twelfth design.

Rakusan again announced 20 as upcoming in the documents for installment six sent out on October 25, 1929, indicating that he planned to publish 20 in November (the next following month) in installment seven as the fourteenth design. However, 20 was still not ready, and again at the last minute another design (14) was substituted and published in installment seven as the fourteenth design.

Here the surviving documentation of the early installments ceases, but it is possible that Rakusan continued to announce 20 as an upcoming design over the next two months.

Edition III: Only a handful of later edition copies of 20 have been located. Despite being documented in two variants, IIIa and IIIb, it is likely that only a single, very small, edition III print run was ever produced. All of the examples of this group of copies for which the watermarks are known are printed on leftover supplies of pre-war edition II watermark paper. Although this print run used edition II watermark paper, it would have been produced early in the edition III period between 1948 and 1955 before Rakusan ran out of edition II paper and began using edition III paper.

There are obvious changes that distinguish the two editions of 20. For edition I Rakusan included two horizontal bands of gold glitter in the upper left quadrant of the image. These were created by woodblock-printing the bands with glue on which the glitter was scattered while the glue was still wet. However in reprinting edition III he elected to omit these glitter bands. In edition I the ground on which the doves sit has feathery sprigs of what may be meant to be moss. In edition III those are omitted entirely. Uncharacteristically, Rakusan also changed the placement of the signature and seal for edition III. In edition I they are at upper left, and in both edition IIIa and IIIb they are at lower right.

Version IIIa: Most edition III copies of 20 have woodblock-printed signatures and seals. These fully finished edition III prints are designated version IIIa. Currently, all but one of the copies of this version also have later-added Foster era cursive Rakusan romaji signatures.

Version IIIb: In the small edition III reprinting Rakusan halted the printing process on a very few copies prior to adding in the woodblock-printed signature and seal, which are the last two impressions to complete the print; thus leaving the copies unfinished. These unfinished copies are here somewhat artificially distinguished as version IIIb. An undistributed version IIIb copy without a signature or seal is preserved in the personal collection of the artist. The unique version IIIb example below right illustrated in the Foster booklet has only a later, hand-applied, signature and seal.

20 (edition I)	20 (edition IIIa)	20 (edition IIIb reproduction from Foster, p.15)

Unfortunately, the best available image of an edition IIIb copy of 20 comes from the Foster booklet where many of the reproduced colors in all of its illustrations are shifted to more yellow tones. The colors in the original print are actually very close to those of the earlier two editions.

20 is one of the very few Rakusan designs for which any other printing details exist. The Foster booklet reports that 20 required 150 printing impressions to complete.

Other Foster Information:
20 is among the most familiar Rakusan designs because of Walter Foster. In addition to marketing original Rakusan woodblock prints of 20 from Japan, Foster also sold two grades of reproductions which he had machine-printed in the USA. Both reproduction versions were created from the same original model, a hand-signed edition IIIb copy of 20 in Foster's personal collection. One version is a fine art reproduction produced for individual sale, and the other (illustrated above right) appears as page 15 of the Foster booklet.

The fine art reproduction was produced to very high standards of photolithography on good quality, heavy matte paper; and the inks were carefully color-matched to those of the original woodblock print. Because of this attention to detail, it was relatively expensive, few copies were sold, and they are seldom encountered today. Instead, what are mostly offered for sale as reproductions of 20 are actually copies of page 15 cut from the Foster booklet. Regrettably, the booklet was inexpensively and inexactly machine-printed on semi-gloss paper, and its illustration colors are not true to the original. Both reproduction versions are of similar size (listed as 9" x 12"); therefore they are significantly smaller than the original woodblock print (listed as 13" x 18"). (Both reproductions actually maintain the unique proportions of the original woodblock print; so the advertised dimensions are only rough approximations.) Initially, Foster sold original woodblock prints of 20 for $25, fine art reproductions for $3, and the entire booklet (with 27 different designs) for $1. Because the Foster booklet was printed in great numbers and remains widely available today, it is usually less expensive to buy the entire booklet than a single page reproduction.

Because Foster could not read Rakusan's Japanese title-captions, he made up ones of his own to use in the booklet. Here he called 20 "Hydrangea and Doves".

[For additional general information on Foster, the booklet, or the fine art reproductions, see the Foster article.]

Copies in Public Collections:
Edition I: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts, USA; (1951) 51.2485 [not illustrated online except as a slightly-cropped greeting card reproduction].

Species Illustrated:
Bigleaf (Garden) Hydrangea, Hydrangea macrophylla, 紫陽花, あじさい, アジサイ, ajisai, has been cultivated and selected for a long time in China and Japan.

Eurasian Collared (Turtle)Dove, Streptopelia decaocto, is originally an exotic pet bird regularly imported from India and locally bred. However, it was successfully released in Japan in the 18th and 19th centuries, and it is now locally common. Today, the Japanese name is usually 白子鳩, しらこばと, シラコバト, shirako-bato, lit. 'albino-dove'. In the title-caption for 20 Rakusan used a now-unfamiliar name, 長生鳩, chousei-bato, lit. 'long-life dove'. Two birds are shown, presumably intended as a mated pair; but since the sexes are alike, they could be any two birds.