Japanese Venuses: Ten Types of Female Nude by Ishikawa Toraji

Tinkle of the bell (1934)

These sumptuous nudes were the work of Ishikawa Toraji (1975-1964).  They are from a set of ten nude prints called Ten types of female nude published in 1934, when he was nearly sixty.  They combine the aesthetics and woodblock printing technique of the classical period with a more European approach to anatomy.  Here, a ripe young woman teases her dog with a bell.

Dance (1934)

Nine out of ten of the pictures feature women in domestic environments but this one is rather different as it features a dancer or, actually, a stripper.  It is clear from the way the figure is lit that she is on stage.

Blue parrot (1934)

In this one there is a mixture of a traditional screen with nineteen thirties furniture and the exotica of a tiger skin.

At the bath (1934)

The prints, although far from explicit, were sensuous enough that the series was banned by the Japanese authorities.  Here a young lady dries herself in a traditional bath, probably in a hot spring resort (onsen)

Morning (1934)

In complete contrast here we have a woman in a very modern bathroom.  These bathroom pictures are reminiscent of those done by French nineteenth century artists who were, in turn, very influenced by Japanese prints.

Reading (1934)

Several of the women in this series have European, short, hair styles and these girls were known as moga (modern girl) in Japan at the time.  Toraji visited both the US and Europe (he studied in France) from 1902 until 1903 so would have been exposed to a lot of western art, which had only started to be seen in Japan in the eighteen eighties.

Bored (1934)

Another reading girl and another animal, in this case a cat, in this one.  The naturalistic physical shape of the women in this set of prints is obviously influenced by contemporary European representations of the nude and is far from the Japanese idealised form of earlier years.

Black cat (1934)

Another cat here, in this tactile-looking print.  Toraji became very involved in the development of art education in Japan.  In 1943 he became head of the Pacific Art School

Relaxing (1934)

A pair of very modern black stockings and more contemporary furniture feature in this print.  She is reminiscent of one of Toulouse Lautrec's prostitutes. These pictures emerged during the shin hanga (new prints) period of Japanese art from about 1915 until 1940.  It was driven, to a large extent, by foreign interest in Japanese prints and there were big exhibitions of shin hanga prints in Toledo in 1930 and 1936.  After this, deteriorating relationships with the western powers saw this external market die away.

Springtime of life (1934)

Finally, we have a young lady admiring herself in the mirror.  So, a splendid set of prints melding traditional Japanese woodcut technique with a European infused aesthetic.

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Venus in Black Stockings 4: Wally Neuzil by Egon Schiele

Wally Neuzil in Black STockings (1912)

Here is a fine study by Austrian artist Egon Schiele of his mistress Wally Neuzil.  Schiele was a very linear artist compared with his older contemporary and mentor Gustave Klimt, who preferred big blocks of bright colour.  As a result the black stockings stand out against the delicate line work of her figure and underwear. 

Wally Neuzil

Wally (Walburga) had been, it is thought, Klimt's model too but Schiele started his relationship with her as soon as she began, at the age of seventeen, modelling for him.

Seated woman with bent knee

He produced an even more famous painting of her in black stockings and a green top and her red hair features in many of Schiele's paintings of the period.  Schiele eventually married Edith Harms, one of his neighbours and a more acceptable wife to society than Wally.  He  expected Wally to remain as his mistress, however, and suggested that they had a holiday together every year. She didn't agree to this (his wife wasn't too happy with the idea either) and she left him and trained as a nurse during WW1.  She died in 1917 in Sinj (now in modern Croatia but then part of the Kingdom of Dalmatia; part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire) of scarlet fever at the age of 23.  Both Schiele and a pregnant Edith died less than a year later in the great influenza epidemic which killed 20 million people in 1918.

Jane Birkin as Wally

In the 1980 film Egon Schiele Exzess und Bestrafung Wally was portrayed by the far from redhead Jane Birkin.  This flawed, but still interesting, film focussed on the time that Schiele was arrested on charges of seducing an under age girl at their house in the Vienna Woods where their unmarried co-habitation was a source of local scandal.  Wally stuck by him, visiting him in prison and eventually he was released only finally being charged with possessing erotic drawings in a place that a child might find them.  

More Schiele another time.

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Venus in black stockings 2: Kelly Brook

There are, disappointingly, comparatively few pictures of Miss Brook in black stockings, an unusual situation for a young lady who spends much of her time posing about in lingerie.  Still, we have two fine examples here: one in hold ups and one in suspenders (or a garter belt if you are a North American).

The one above looks effectively slutty, probably because she is wearing a dress rather than just a boudoir concoction as in the one below (in which she looks very young).  The illicit flash of stockings in everyday wear is so much more potent than seeing them on an undressed girl.  Triple P remembers a meeting where he sat next to a girl from HM Treasury who not only flashed the tops of her stockings when seated but spent the whole meeting pinging her suspender straps against her leg.  Most distracting!

We note that poor Kelly broke up with her boyfriend this week, mainly, it seems, because she kept going to meet the previous one.  We imagine that she won't be on the market for very long.

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Venus in black stockings 1: Lesley-Anne Down

Lesley Anne Down in the Alberto episode of Upstairs, Downstairs, first broadcast 16th November 1975

In a world where there were only three television channels, TV watching in the seventies was a much more communal affair for families than it is today.    No tablets, no smart phones, no home computers, no video recording devices to enable time shifting.  If you wanted to watch something on TV you had to be sat down in front of it at the appointed time.  

One of the programmes that Agent Triple P had to endure, during family viewing at the weekends in the early Seventies, was Upstairs, Downstairs, which was very much Downton Abbey's forebear.  A largely tedious (for a teenager) tale of aristocrats and their servants it had very little of interest for Agent Triple P.  However, from series three the programme was considerably enlivened by the presence of the luminously beautiful Lesley-Anne Down, who was just nineteen when she first appeared in it.

One scene involving her has stuck in Triple P's mind for nearly forty years and recently we were delighted to find an illustration of her from this scene.  In the episode Alberto, from the fifth and final series from 1975, Lesley-Anne, as Georgina Worsley, is offered a role in a film, Paris by Night.  Jealous suitor James Bellamy (Simon Williams) turns up at the studio concerned about the whole thing and quite rightly, it seems, as Lesley-Anne is wearing the sort of outfit that a young lady should not be seen in, even in the nineteen twenties.  As a fifteen year old to see quite such a risque outfit on prime time (not that that was a term in use in those days in the UK) weekend drama was a splendid surprise.

Our second dose of a be-stockinged Lesley Anne comes from the enjoyable Michael Crichton Victorian caper film The First Great Train Robbery (1979).  The film has much to recommend it, including Geoffrey Unsworth's photography, a good recreation of Victorian London (shot in Dublin), an engaging performance by Sean Connery (doing some amazingly risky stunts on top of a moving train) and a marvellous score by Jerry Goldsmith; the main theme from which is particularly hard to get out of your head once you have heard it.

Lesley-Anne also puts in a splendid performance and is particularly eye-catching in some, we have to admit, rather anachronistic lingerie.   Still, it catches the spirit of saucy Victorian underwear even if it has been somewhat modernised.

The image of her in her corset and stockings was so strong it featured, not surprisingly, in the film's posters.  The pose of her in the version of the poster above made a strong impression on Agent Triple P years before he actually saw the film.  The poster art is by top American poster artist Tom Jung who is famous for his work on such iconic posters for films like Doctor Zhivago and Star Wars.

More of Miss Down soon.  Next up, her fetching publicity shots for Sphinx (1981)

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