Jugglers - Adolfo Farsari Hand-tinted Gelatin Silver Art Print

Adolfo Farsari's Jugglers kneel on tatami with their fans shut, two performers dressed for daikagura and caught in the second before the act begins.

The girl's kataginu juts out wide, a paper kite cut from old-gold brocade with vermilion tortoiseshell hexagons and a rose madder lining. Wisteria-violet sleeves pool at her elbows. Beside her, a man with cropped Meiji hair wears the same winged kamishimo in olive gold, chalk-pale blossoms scattered down his trailing hakama. Samurai once wore this outfit to face their lords. By the 1880s the warrior class was gone, yet entertainers kept its tailoring on stage.

A Yokohama colorist touched this hand-tinted gelatin silver photograph with watercolor so thin the silver still shows through. Each painter finished two or three prints a day. His vest lining took an aquamarine wash and her cheeks a petal-pink flush. Behind them the shoji screen stayed tea-stained sepia, a paper grid with no color to its name.

Adolfo Farsari came from Vicenza by way of the American Civil War. He sold Yokohama shashin to steamship tourists hungry for Japonisme, and this hand-colored studio portrait has the trade at full polish. Meiji-era travelers carrying such portraits home in lacquered souvenir albums. And this vintage Japanese art print keeps what they paid for: a troupe of two staring down the lens, props folded, waiting for somebody to throw the first ball.