Posted by Noel Chiappa (98.166.150.196) on November 16, 2010 at 15:08:31:
In Reply to: Re: Herde Utamaro! posted by Guy on November 16, 2010 at 09:22:17:
"In this case, no more than two colours were used at the base: sumi(black) and blue"
I know there are some landscape prints that use blue for foliage (notably some of Hokusai's '36 Views of Fuji' - but if you look closely in them, there are some parts which are green), but I would have _guessed_ that the foliage here had originally been printed in green (produced by a combination of blue and yellow inks). Since the yellow is the most fugitive of all the colorants used at this point in time, and the blue the least, the yellow would have faded first, leaving the blue.
Without another copy of this print to compare with, we can't know for sure, of course... But the fact that it's in a frame, as so has clearly seen a lot of light, if there _had_ been yellow, it would be gone now.
Noel