• Onoe Kikugorō III (尾上菊五郎) as the ghost of Yasukata (<i>Yasukata no bōrei</i> - 安方ノ亡霊) from the series  <i>Comparisons for Thirty-six Selected Poems</i> (<i>Mitate sanjūrokkasen no uchi</i> - 見立三十六歌撰之内)
  • Bandō Hikosaburō V (坂東彦三郎) as Nezumi Kozō Jirokichi (鼠子僧次郎吉) from the series <i>Mirror of Demonic People, Good and Evil</i> (<i>Zen'aku kijin kagami</i> - 善悪鬼人鏡)
  • Nakamura Shikan I (中村芝翫) as a celestial being (天人) from 御名残押絵交張 (おんなごりおしえのまぜはり) - from the dance of nine changes
  • Sakata no Kintoki (坂田金時) wrestling with a three-eyed <i>Mikoshi nyūdō</i> [見越入道]
  • Katō Kiyomasa, a vassal of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, killing a tiger
  • Volume 4 of <i>Gaten Tsūkō</i> [画典通考]
  • The deluxe <i>shunga</i> album, <i>Ama no Ukibashi</i>, 'The Floating Bridge of Heaven' [天浮橋]
  • Volume 5 of <i>Gaten Tsūkō</i> [画典通考]
  • Katō Kiyomasa (加藤主計頭清正) and the tiger from the series <i>A Brief History of Japan in Pictures</i> (<i>Nihon ryakushi zu</i> - 日本畧史圖)
  • Ichikawa Danjūrō VIII on the right as Kanō Motonobu (狩野四郎次郎元信) and Bandō Shūka I as  the Shōgun's daughter Omatsu (将監娘おみつ)

Welcome to The Lyon Collection!

Ukiyo-e Prints in the Mike Lyon Collection

Mike Lyon (artist b. 1951) was fortunate to have grown up familiar with Japanese prints. In his youth Lyon’s parents and grandparents displayed examples that certainly inspired his own artistic development. He began acquiring Japanese color woodcuts early in his career as an artist. The types of prints that feature most prominently among the many hundreds in Lyon's collection reflect the artist’s deep appreciation of the human figure and the expressive facial portrait. The vast majority of Japanese prints in the Lyon collection represent views of actors yakusha-e) and beautiful women (bijin-ga), and in particular the close-up, bust-length portraits of the same (okubi-e).

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