Virtual Collecting

On eBay just now, I found ten prints that I would buy in a Manhattan minute, given enough ready cash and an unreasonably indulgent wife. Yoshitoshi, Kiyuchika, Koitsu, Kotozuka and Kasamatsu. Yum, but $1,600 minimum for the bunch. Not gonna happen.

The only solution is Virtual Collecting. And since there are reams and reams of print images on the internet, the object of this kind of collecting has to be limiting my imaginary gallery to, say, 20 prints. With that limit, I can see now that there might be one or two candidates in the prints on my Watch list:



Tsuchiya Koitsu "Kiyomizu Ueno"
Kiyochika, "Cloudy Moon at Haneda"

Both very different, both quite beautiful, and I'd love to own them. But really, not in my top 20.

Here's a better possibility:




This is a Kasamatsu, my latest flame, of the "Ginza District". One reason I like this print so much is that it retains the romanticism of so many Shin Hanga landscape prints while capturing a modern night with modern people. (Well, 1950s, maybe.)

So, I'll add this one to the Twenty along with "Rainy Night at Shinobazu Pond" by the same artist.