Miniature Art

Kristine DeBell is a  vintage photo, realized by Helmut Newton in the 1970s. The artwork represent fashion model and actress in 1970s. 

Cartoon sketch, ca. 1955. Pencil on paper, sheet measures 8.5 x 11 inches. Unsigned with editor's notations. From a group of sketches meant to be preliminary drafts for editor appro...

'Il Quebec / Irochesi - Capo degl' Irochesi'' Italian lithograph, c1841. Originally from 'Galleria universale di tutti i popoli del mondo' by Giuseppe Antonelli, published in Venice...

Greg Chann Wall Stack IV, 2024 Acrylic and ink 16 x 13 x 4 in. (cha013)

Dale Nichols, 'Partners', lithograph, edition 250, 1950. Signed in pencil. A fine, richly-inked impression, on cream wove paper; the full sheet with margins (7/8 to 1 5/8 inches); tw...

English School Farmyard Scene with Horses and Goat Oil on panel, unsigned The Circle of John Frederick Herring Sr. Circa 1880 Presented in a later gilt and painted frame This finely rendered 19th-century English farmyard scene captures the quiet dignity of rural life, with a group of three horses—white, chestnut, and black—gathered beneath a tree in the warm light of late afternoon. A small goat stands to one side near a rustic stable, adding a note of charming domesticity to the composition. The surrounding landscape, with its distant hills and careful play of shadow and cloud, speaks to the artist’s sensitivity to atmosphere and detail. Though unsigned, the painting is executed in a manner closely aligned with the work of John Frederick Herring Senior, one of Britain’s most celebrated animal painters of the Victorian era. The careful modelling of the horses, their distinctive postures and anatomy, and the tranquil farm setting are all hallmarks of Herring’s influence. Painted in oils on a wooden panel, the surface retains a fine, even gloss and a warm palette typical of the period. The composition is both balanced and lyrical: the interplay of form and gesture among the animals invites the viewer into a moment of repose between work and activity, emblematic of Victorian ideals of harmony between man, beast, and the land. A delightful example of 19th-century English rural painting...

Medium: original lithograph. This lithograph is from the rare 1954 "Improvisations" portfolio, published by the Artists Equity Association of New York on the occasion of the 1954 Spr...

This piece is from my private collection of 20th Century -21st Century artists, many of which are from the School of Paris era. Pelayo produced this lithograph in colors. The Latin American spirit...

'Flowering Shrubs' Antique English flower botanical chromolithograph.

Earl Horter, 'The Woolworth Building Under Construction', etching, c. 1912, edition not stated. Signed in pencil. A fine, richly-inked impression, in warm black ink, with selectively...

Card Game in the Parlour by ALEXANDER AUSTEN (1859-1924) signed oil on canvas, framed framed: 17 x 15 inches canvas: 12 x 10 inches Provenance: Private collection, Yorkshire, England...

Edouard Benedictus, 'Poppy' from the portfolio 'Relais', plate 14, color pochoir, 1930. Signed in the matrix, in the center bottom margin. A superb, richly-inked impression, with fresh, vibrant colors, including metallic gold and silver inks, on heavy, cream wove paper; the full sheet with margins (1 3/8 inches), in excellent condition. Published by Éditions Vincent, Fréal et Cie, Paris. The pochoir production is by Jean Saudé, the French printmaker known for his mastery of the technique and the author of the first how-to book on the pochoir process. Matted to museum standards, unframed. Image size 14 3/8 x 11 inches (365 x 279 mm); sheet size 17 1/4 x 13 7/8 inches (438 x 352 mm). Impressions of this work are held in the following museum collections: Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum Library (Smithsonian), Metropolitan Museum of Art, Minneapolis Institute of Art, New York Public Library, Toledo Museum of Art, Victoria and Albert Museum (London), Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. ABOUT THIS WORK The Pochoir process is a refined stencil-based technique employed to create multiples or to add color to prints produced in other mediums. Characterized by its crisp lines and rich color, the print-making process was most popular from the late 19th century through the 1930s, with its center of activity in Paris. The pochoir process began with the analysis of an image’s composition, including color tones and densities. The numerous stencils (made of aluminum, copper, or zinc) necessary to create a complete image were then designed and hand-cut by the 'découpeur.' The 'coloristes' applied watercolor or gouache pigments through the stencils, skillfully employing a variety of different brushes and methods of paint application to achieve the desired depth of color and textural and tonal nuance. The pochoir process, by virtue of its handcrafted methodology, resulted in the finished work producing the effect of an original painting, and in fact, each print was unique. ABOUT THE ARTIST Edouard Benedictus (1878 -1930), artist, designer, composer, and chemist, was born and died in Paris. A highly-regarded designer and art critic of the Art Nouveau era, Benedictus gained renown as a colorist and creator of Art Deco-inspired geometric and floral motifs. His work had a significant influence on international fashions in clothing, home furnishings, graphic design, and decorative objects of the period, earning him commissions from leading European design firms. In 1925 he was invited to represent Art Deco textile design...

Artist/ School: English School, late 19th/ early 20th century. The painting came from a large collection of works by one artist. A very few of them are signed what looks to be 'F. Wa...

Wild Things (Till Death do us Part) - 2005 20x20cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs, Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist Inventory...

Maggie Taylor's digital creations are emblematic, afterimages that invite, transport and are unforgettable. Taylor's images are built, layer by layer and object by object, through a ...

Contemporay English School signed oil painting on copper panel framed: 13 x 14.5 inches panel: 8 x 10 inches provenance: private collection, England condition: overall very good

The Beach at Kaiganji in Sanuki Province (Sanuki Kaiganji no hama), from the series Collected Views of Japan II, Kansai Edition (Nihon fûkei shû II Kansai hen), woodblock print, 1934. A very fine, atmospheric impression, with fresh colors; the full sheet, in excellent condition. Signed 'Hasui' with the artist’s seal 'Kawase', lower left. Published by Watanabe Shozaburo with the Watanabe ‘D’ seal indicating an early impression printed between 1931 - 1941. Stamped faintly 'Made in Japan' in the bottom center margin, verso. Horizontal ôban; image size 9 3/8 x 14 1/4 inches (238 x 362 mm); sheet size approximately 10 5/16 x 15 1/2 inches ( 262 x 394 mm). Collections: Art Institute of Chicago; Austrian Museum of Applied Arts (Vienna); Honolulu Museum of Art; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; National Museum in Warsaw; University of Wisconsin-Madison. ABOUT THE ARTIST “I do not paint subjective impressions. My work is based on reality...I can not falsify...(but) I can simplify…I make mental impressions of the light and color at the time of sketching. While coloring the sketch, I am already imagining the effects in a woodblock print.” — Kawase Hasui Hasui Kawase...

Joseph Kardonne (1911-1985). East River, 1966. 9.5 x 12.25 inches. Watercolor on paper, sheet measures inches. Signed, dated and titled lower right. Excellent condition. Born in N...

"Meadow in the Rockies" (2025) by Lorenzo Chavez is an original, handmade oil painting that depicts a serene autumn midwestern landscape, looking out onto the base of small mountain ...

A wonderful composition of one of Slonem's most iconic subjects, Butterflies. This piece depicts two delicate butterflies in ascension placed in a wonderful golden landscape. Slonem ...

Think - 2021 - 24x20cm, Edition of 7 plus 2 Artist Proofs, digital C-Print based on a Polaroid, Signed on the back and with certificate. Artist inventory PL2021-1041. Not mounted...

Leigh Ann Van Fossan's "Le Jardin de Monet, II" is an original, handmade oil painting that depicts an impression of a lily pond. Van Fossan was born in Vail, Colorado, and began oi...

'Summer Shade' Portugal, 2021 Photograph of a pine tree rising above the sea along the Portuguese coastline. The photograph is signed front and back and comes with a Certificate o...

Medium: original lithograph. Printed in Paris in 1968 by the Mourlot Freres atelier. Size: 12 1/4 x 9 1/4 inches (313 x 235 mm). Not signed.

This vibrant sculpured painting titled "Life" is a contemporary mixed media wall sculpture by Italian artist Vera Vizzi, exploring the symbolic and emotional resonance of transformat...

His series "Room" or "My carnival" evokes the fantasy of the mistress, fetishist eroticism, 5 to 7, free fantasy. Eric produces erotic art without ever biting into porn-chic always being more obsessed with aesthetics than with simulacrum. If he worships more than one of these predecessors who poured into more outrage, it is freely that he suggests to the imagination to imagine without capturing the fantasy of the viewer. The choice had been made of very high quality prints: cotton fiber base baryta paper without chlorine and high grammage (310 gr / m²), pigment inks. They carry on the back an authentication label signed by Eric Ceccarini The enhancement of this limited edition of 100 copies is ensured by the use of a unique high-quality box to keep the 12 fine art prints This is edition #1/100 Eric is a Belgian artist born in 1965. He gained a Degree in Photography from INFAC, Brussels in 1987. Since then he has been a fashion photographer working with many of the top houses. Elle, Marie-Claire, L'Oréal, Levi's, Coca Cola, Virgin, Saab, Delvaux, Lowe Lintas and Ogilvy are some of his clients. Among other distinctions, his photography for the Saab cabrio 9-3 campaign was awarded the Silver Lion at the Cannes International Advertising Festival. Eric is set apart from many of his colleagues by his way of shunning technical artifice and working in natural light. This results in soft, velvety, almost painterly images. Nowadays in his artistic works, he captures women's essence and soul, transcending mere physical representation. Eric's "AMNIOS" series of soul portraits- the model appear in suspended animation, as if they were about to born, and full of hidden secrets. This represents a new conceptual departure for Eric, who began as a fashion photographer, moving on to classic artistic nudes...

Medium: original etching. Executed by Tissot for the "Rene Mauperin" suite of etchings, published in Paris in 1884 by Charpentier in a limited edition of 550. This is a nice impressi...

Frozen Farmland Study 3, Austria - no. 21353 // Black and White Fine Art landscape photography. Blue Agave, plant, detail, Arizona, USA. Archival pigment ink print, edition of 9. Si...

This piece titled "Twenty Silver Eggs" is an original piece by Kate VanVliet and is made from silverplate and brass. This piece measures 16”h x 10.5”w x 1”d and is hand signed by the...

Henri MATISSE (1869-1964) Paris : Saint Michel Bridge, 1927 Original etching Printed signature in the plate Limited to 225 copies On BFK Rives vellum 25 x 33 cm (c. 9.8 x 12.9 in)...

"Liz's Scissors" by William Lovelace 6th March 1964: Elizabeth Taylor gives her future husband Richard Burton (1925-1984) a cursory haircut. Unframed Paper Size: 12" x 16'' (inches...

Pablo PICASSO (1881-1973) Diurnes, Woman By the Sea, 1962 Original collotype and stencil (Jacomet workshop) Unsigned Limited to 1000 copy On paper 40 X 30 cm (c. 15.7 x 11.2 in) R...

The Old Harbor French Impressionist artist, mid 20th century oil on canvas laid over board, framed painting: 9 x 9 inches framed: 9.5 x 9.5 inches condition: overall very good, a few...

This lithograph is a piece from my private collection of 20th Century School of Paris era artists. It is hand signed by the artist and numbered, Guilde de la Gravure, and is in very ...

This proof depicts one of Jim Dine's signatures motifs, a deep red heart, which drips down the page. Along the right side of the heart, hand-drawn text reads: “Red design for satin h...

Hand painted zinc alloy metal pumpkin with perforated dots Edition of 250 12 x 12 cm (4.7 x 4.7 in) Numbered Mint, as issued. Sold in the original packaging

Jean-Gabriel DOMERGUE Paris, Going at Maxim's Cafe, 1956 Original lithograph (Mourlot workshop) Printed signature in the plate On Japan paper 40 x 31 cm (c. 16 x 12") INFORMATION :...

Jane Skingley b. 1963 Hokusai Covers VI, 2025 mixed media on old book cover 26 x 17 cm 10 1/4 x 6 3/4 in signed Jane Skingley paints seascapes and landscapes in oils. Her first exhi...

'Oui Mon Cul' (The Eyes Of The Fox) - 2015, Artprint based on a Carmen De Vos expired Polaroid photograph on beautiful PHOTO RAG ULTRA SMOOTH, 305gsm, 100% cotton by HAHNEMÜHLE Han...

Title: French Impressionist Oil Painting of Landscape of Riverside Cottages at Dusk By Fanch Lel (French b. 1930) Size: 7 x 9.5 inches (height x width) Oil painting on board, unframe...

An early 20th-century Hayley Lever watercolor depicting fishing boats docked at the St. Ives Harbor, Cornwall, England. A fine, spontaneous rendering on watercolor paper, with fresh ...

Aventure d'une libertine X, Paris, 2015 From The Secret Album Series Edition 6/6 ex. 5 AP. Unframed The Secret Album Series This series is born from a p...

Silvered Sky, Beautiful Skies Series oil/panel 6 x 8 image unframed, 12.38 x 14.38 framed Silvered Sky is a study painting in the Beautiful Skies Series by award winning contemporar...

Color lithograph after the 1954 oil on canvas by René Magritte, plate-signed by Magritte and numbered from the edition of 300. The lithograph features the dry stamps of the Magritte...

Trees on the Roof Study 1, Norway - no. 21239 // Black and white fine art landscape photography. Archival pigment ink print as part of a limited edition of 7. All Gerald Berghammer ...

William Mozart McVey (American, 1905-1995) Rumination Cast bronze with brown patina Signed on back foot 8 x 4 x 3 inches William McVey (12 July 1905-31 May 1995) became Cleveland's ...

Carl Flodman (1863-1888) Swede A Harbor Scene from 1884 oil on wood panel signed and dated C.Flodman 84 unframed: 13 x 21 cm (5 1/8 x 8 1/4 in) framed: 29 x 37.5 cm (11 3/8 x 14 3/...

Motivated by bold color and fast brushwork, we are moved by the simplicity and thick textured oil paints in these works. Shaoul’s “My Heart Collection” is a vibrant and energetic dis...

Paree #13, 2013, Edition printed 2018, Edition 1/7, 25x25cm plus 3cm white border. [From the series Goldenbogen & Zouzou] Digital archival pigment print on beautiful PHOTO RAG ® UL...

Vintage impasto oil painting beach scene on the French Riviera Signed on verso Nikki 1955

Lithograph on vélin paper. Inscription: Unsigned and unnumbered, as issued. Good condition. Notes: From the album, Chagall, Vitraux pour Jérusalem. Published by Musée des Arts Décora...

Frame size 50x58 cm. Joan Cruspinera Muñoz was born in 1945 in Tiana, Barcelona. This Catalan artist is a painter, draftsman and painter. His training...

Watercolor on paper sold with frame (wooden frame with glass) Total size with frame 33x43 cm

Title: French Impressionist Oil Painting of Floral Still Life in Earthen Vase By Fanch Lel (French b. 1930) Size: 10.25 x 8 inches (height x width) Signed: Yes Oil painting on board,...

3423 English writer portrait, oil on board displayed in a gilt -wood frame, signed by Welsh.Image size 10 H x 8 W

Floral Still Life Ben-Zion (Ukraine, 1897-1987) Circa 1930's Oil on Canvas, signed l.r. 17 3/4 x 12 5/8 One of the founding artists of Abstract Expressionism, hailing from Ukraine,...

Lithograph on vélin paper. Paper Size: 12.75 x 9.428 inches. Inscription: Unsigned and unnumbered, as issued. Catalogue raisonné references: Cain, Julien, and Fernand Mourlot. Chagal...

Tableau, Japanese, limited edition lithograph, black, white, red, signed, number Shinoda's works have been collected by public galleries and museums, including the Museum of Modern Art, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Brooklyn Museum and Metropolitan Museum (all in New York City), the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo, the British Museum in London, the Art Institute of Chicago, Arthur M. Sackler Gallery of the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C., the Singapore Art Museum, the National Museum of Singapore, the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo, Netherlands, the Albright–Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York, the Cincinnati Art Museum, and the Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven, Connecticut. New York Times Obituary, March 3, 2021 by Margalit Fox, Alex Traub contributed reporting. Toko Shinoda, one of the foremost Japanese artists of the 20th century, whose work married the ancient serenity of calligraphy with the modernist urgency of Abstract Expressionism, died on Monday at a hospital in Tokyo. She was 107. Her death was announced by her gallerist in the United States. A painter and printmaker, Ms. Shinoda attained international renown at midcentury and remained sought after by major museums and galleries worldwide for more than five decades. Her work has been exhibited at, among other places, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York; the Art Institute of Chicago; the British Museum; and the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo. Private collectors include the Japanese imperial family. Writing about a 1998 exhibition of Ms. Shinoda’s work at a London gallery, the British newspaper The Independent called it “elegant, minimal and very, very composed,” adding, “Her roots as a calligrapher are clear, as are her connections with American art of the 1950s, but she is quite obviously a major artist in her own right.” As a painter, Ms. Shinoda worked primarily in sumi ink, a solid form of ink, made from soot pressed into sticks, that has been used in Asia for centuries. Rubbed on a wet stone to release their pigment, the sticks yield a subtle ink that, because it is quickly imbibed by paper, is strikingly ephemeral. The sumi artist must make each brush stroke with all due deliberation, as the nature of the medium precludes the possibility of reworking even a single line. “The color of the ink which is produced by this method is a very delicate one,” Ms. Shinoda told The Business Times of Singapore in 2014. “It is thus necessary to finish one’s work very quickly. So the composition must be determined in my mind before I pick up the brush. Then, as they say, the painting just falls off the brush.” Ms. Shinoda painted almost entirely in gradations of black, with occasional sepias and filmy blues. The ink sticks she used had been made for the great sumi artists of the past, some as long as 500 years ago. Her line — fluid, elegant, impeccably placed — owed much to calligraphy. She had been rigorously trained in that discipline from the time she was a child, but she had begun to push against its confines when she was still very young. Deeply influenced by American Abstract Expressionists like Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko and Robert Motherwell, whose work she encountered when she lived in New York in the late 1950s, Ms. Shinoda shunned representation. “If I have a definite idea, why paint it?,” she asked in an interview with United Press International in 1980. “It’s already understood and accepted. A stand of bamboo is more beautiful than a painting could be. Mount Fuji is more striking than any possible imitation.” Spare and quietly powerful, making abundant use of white space, Ms. Shinoda’s paintings are done on traditional Chinese and Japanese papers, or on backgrounds of gold, silver or platinum leaf. Often asymmetrical, they can overlay a stark geometric shape with the barest calligraphic strokes. The combined effect appears to catch and hold something evanescent — “as elusive as the memory of a pleasant scent or the movement of wind,” as she said in a 1996 interview. Ms. Shinoda’s work also included lithographs; three-dimensional pieces of wood and other materials; and murals in public spaces, including a series made for the Zojoji Temple in Tokyo. The fifth of seven children of a prosperous family, Ms. Shinoda was born on March 28, 1913, in Dalian, in Manchuria, where her father, Raijiro, managed a tobacco plant. Her mother, Joko, was a homemaker. The family returned to Japan when she was a baby, settling in Gifu, midway between Kyoto and Tokyo. One of her father’s uncles, a sculptor and calligrapher, had been an official seal carver to the Meiji emperor. He conveyed his love of art and poetry to Toko’s father, who in turn passed it to Toko. “My upbringing was a very traditional one, with relatives living with my parents,” she said in the U.P.I. interview. “In a scholarly atmosphere, I grew up knowing I wanted to make these things, to be an artist.” She began studying calligraphy at 6, learning, hour by hour, impeccable mastery over line. But by the time she was a teenager, she had begun to seek an artistic outlet that she felt calligraphy, with its centuries-old conventions, could not afford. “I got tired of it and decided to try my own style,” Ms. Shinoda told Time magazine in 1983. “My father always scolded me for being naughty and departing from the traditional way, but I had to do it.” Moving to Tokyo as a young adult, Ms. Shinoda became celebrated throughout Japan as one of the country’s finest living calligraphers, at the time a signal honor for a woman. She had her first solo show in 1940, at a Tokyo gallery. During World War II, when she forsook the city for the countryside near Mount Fuji, she earned her living as a calligrapher, but by the mid-1940s she had started experimenting with abstraction. In 1954 she began to achieve renown outside Japan with her inclusion in an exhibition of Japanese calligraphy at MoMA. In 1956, she traveled to New York. At the time, unmarried Japanese women could obtain only three-month visas for travel abroad, but through zealous renewals, Ms. Shinoda managed to remain for two years. She met many of the titans of Abstract Expressionism there, and she became captivated by their work. “When I was in New York in the ’50s, I was often included in activities with those artists, people like Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock, Motherwell and so forth,” she said in a 1998 interview with The Business Times. “They were very generous people, and I was often invited to visit their studios, where we would share ideas and opinions on our work. It was a great experience being together with people who shared common feelings.” During this period, Ms. Shinoda’s work was sold in the United States by Betty Parsons, the New York dealer who represented Pollock, Rothko and many of their contemporaries. Returning to Japan, Ms. Shinoda began to fuse calligraphy and the Expressionist aesthetic in earnest. The result was, in the words of The Plain Dealer of Cleveland in 1997, “an art of elegant simplicity and high drama.” Among Ms. Shinoda’s many honors, she was depicted, in 2016, on a Japanese postage stamp. She is the only Japanese artist to be so honored during her lifetime. No immediate family members survive. When she was quite young and determined to pursue a life making art, Ms. Shinoda made the decision to forgo the path that seemed foreordained for women of her generation. “I never married and have no children,” she told The Japan Times in 2017. “And I suppose that it sounds strange to think that my paintings are in place of them — of course they are not the same thing at all. But I do say, when paintings that I have made years ago are brought back into my consciousness, it seems like an old friend, or even a part of me, has come back to see me.” Works of a Woman's Hand Toko Shinoda bases new abstractions on ancient calligraphy Down a winding side street in the Aoyama district, western Tokyo. into a chunky white apartment building, then up in an elevator small enough to make a handful of Western passengers friends or enemies for life. At the end of a hall on the fourth floor, to the right, stands a plain brown door. To be admitted is to go through the looking glass. Sayonara today. Hello (Konichiwa) yesterday and tomorrow. Toko Shinoda, 70, lives and works here. She can be, when she chooses, on e of Japans foremost calligraphers, master of an intricate manner of writing that traces its lines back some 3,000 years to ancient China. She is also an avant-garde artist of international renown, whose abstract paintings and lithographs rest in museums around the world. These diverse talents do not seem to belong in the same epoch. Yet they have somehow converged in this diminutive woman who appears in her tiny foyer, offering slippers and ritual bows of greeting. She looks like someone too proper to chip a teacup, never mind revolutionize an old and hallowed art form She wears a blue and white kimono of her own design. Its patterns, she explains, are from Edo, meaning the period of the Tokugawa shoguns, before her city was renamed Tokyo in 1868. Her black hair is pulled back from her face, which is virtually free of lines and wrinkles. except for the gold-rimmed spectacles perched low on her nose (this visionary is apparently nearsighted). Shinoda could have stepped directly from a 19th century Meji print. Her surroundings convey a similar sense of old aesthetics, a retreat in the midst of a modern, frenetic city. The noise of the heavy traffic on a nearby elevated highway sounds at this height like distant surf. delicate bamboo shades filter the daylight. The color arrangement is restful: low ceilings of exposed wood, off-white walls, pastel rugs of blue, green and gray. It all feels so quintessentially Japanese that Shinoda’s opening remarks come as a surprise. She points out (through a translator) that she was not born in Japan at all but in Darien, Manchuria. Her father had been posted there to manage a tobacco company under the aegis of the occupying Japanese forces, which seized the region from Russia in 1905. She says,”People born in foreign places are very free in their thinking, not restricted” But since her family went back to Japan in 1915, when she was two, she could hardly remember much about a liberated childhood? She answers,”I think that if my mother had remained in Japan, she would have been an ordinary Japanese housewife. Going to Manchuria, she was able to assert her own personality, and that left its mark on me.” Evidently so. She wears her obi low on the hips, masculine style. The Porcelain aloofness she displays in photographs shatters in person. Her speech is forceful, her expression animated and her laugh both throaty and infectious. The hand she brings to her mouth to cover her amusement (a traditional female gesture of modesty) does not stand a chance. Her father also made a strong impression on the fifth of his seven children:”He came from a very old family, and he was quite strict in some ways and quite liberal in others.” He owned one of the first three bicycles ever imported to Japan and tinkered with it constantly He also decided that his little daughter would undergo rigorous training in a procrustean antiquity. “I was forced to study from age six on to learn calligraphy,” Shinoda says, The young girl dutifully memorized and copied the accepted models. In one sense, her father had pushed her in a promising direction, one of the few professional fields in Japan open to females. Included among the ancient terms that had evolved around calligraphy was onnade, or woman's writing. Heresy lay ahead. By the time she was 15, she had already been through nine years of intensive discipline, “I got tired of it and decided to try my own style. My father always scolded me for being naughty and departing from the traditional way, but I had to do it.” She produces a brush and a piece of paper to demonstrate the nature of her rebellion. “This is kawa, the accepted calligraphic character for river,” she says, deftly sketching three short vertical strokes. “But I wanted to use more than three lines to show the force of the river.” Her brush flows across the white page, leaving a recognizable river behind, also flowing.” The simple kawa in the traditional language was not enough for me. I wanted to find a new symbol to express the word river.” Her conviction grew that ink could convey the ineffable, the feeling, "as she says, of wind blowing softly.” Another demonstration. She goes to the sliding wooden door of an anteroom and disappears in back of it; the only trace of her is a triangular swatch of the right sleeve of her kimono, which she has arranged for that purpose. A realization dawns. The task of this artist is to paint that three sided pattern so that the invisible woman attached to it will be manifest to all viewers. Gen, painted especially for TIME, shows Shinoda’s theory in practice. She calls the work “my conception of Japan in visual terms.” A dark swath at the left, punctuated by red, stands for history. In the center sits a Chinese character gen, which means in the present or actuality. A blank pattern at the right suggests an unknown future. Once out of school, Shinoda struck off on a path significantly at odds with her culture. She recognized marriage for what it could mean to her career (“a restriction”) and decided against it. There was a living to be earned by doing traditional calligraphy:she used her free time to paint her variations. In 1940 a Tokyo gallery exhibited her work. (Fourteen years would pass before she got a second show.)War came, and bad times for nearly everyone, including the aspiring artist , who retreated to a rural area near Mount Fuji and traded her kimonos for eggs. In 1954 Shinoda’s work was included in a group exhibit at New York City’s Museum of Modern Art. Two years later, she overcame bureaucratic obstacles to visit the U.S.. Unmarried Japanese women are allowed visas for only three months, patiently applying for two-month extensions, one at a time, Shinoda managed to travel the country for two years. She pulls out a scrapbook from this period. Leafing through it, she suddenly raises a hand and touches her cheek:”How young I looked!” An inspection is called for. The woman in the grainy, yellowing newspaper photograph could easily be the on e sitting in this room. Told this, she nods and smiles. No translation necessary. Her sojourn in the U.S. proved to be crucial in the recognition and development of Shinoda’s art. Celebrities such as actor Charles Laughton and John Lewis of the Modern Jazz Quartet bought her paintings and spread the good word. She also saw the works of the abstract expressionists, then the rage of the New York City art world, and realized that these Western artists, coming out of an utterly different tradition, were struggling toward the same goal that had obsessed her. Once she was back home, her work slowly made her famous. Although Shinoda has used many materials (fabric, stainless steel, ceramics, cement), brush and ink remain her principal means of expression. She had said, “As long as I am devoted to the creation of new forms, I can draw even with muddy water.” Fortunately, she does not have to. She points with evident pride to her ink stone, a velvety black slab of rock, with an indented basin, that is roughly a foot across and two feet long. It is more than 300 years old. Every working morning, Shinoda pours about a third of a pint of water into it, then selects an ink stick from her extensive collection, some dating back to China’s Ming dynasty. Pressing stick against stone, she begins rubbing. Slowly, the dried ink dissolves in the water and becomes ready for the brush. So two batches of sumi (India ink) are exactly alike; something old, something new. She uses color sparingly. Her clear preference is black and all its gradations. “In some paintings, sumi expresses blue better than blue.” It is time to go downstairs to the living quarters. A niece, divorced and her daughter,10,stay here with Shinoda; the artist who felt forced to renounce family and domesticity at the outset of her career seems welcome to it now. Sake is offered, poured into small cedar boxes and happily accepted. Hold carefully. Drink from a corner. Ambrosial. And just right for the surroundings and the hostess. A conservative renegade; a liberal traditionalist; a woman steeped in the male-dominated conventions that she consistently opposed. Her trail blazing accomplishments are analogous to Picasso’s. When she says goodbye, she bows. --by Paul Gray...

This finely executed oil painting, attributed to the circle of Christian Wilhelm Ernst Dietrich, captures the contemplative expression of an elderly man, his gaze lowered in quiet re...