Woman of the Island, from the series "New Twelve Images of Modern Beauties"

Most of Itô Shinsui’s print designs feature geisha, but the figure depicted here wears traditional indigo-dyed clothing that identifies her as a common woman from Ôshima Island. It is a sentimentalized portrait in which she appears to be innocently untouched by the twentieth century. The depth and variety of blues used for her clothes, the sky, and the water in the bucket are notably modern and were achieved by using natural dyes applied in several layers.