Numbered ‘1559’ and titled ‘Dressing at Looking Glass’.

Photographed by Reiji Esaki.

According to Terry Bennett’s Old Japanese Photographs: Collectors’ Data Guide (Quaritch, 2006): ‘It should be stressed that this attribution is tentative. The Esaki association derives from one album of fifty images, in the Dubois collection, where the frontispiece consisted of Esaki’s famous photographic collage of 1700 babies. The name and address of the studio is shown on the print, which was also registered for copyright, and this appeared to provide reasonable circumstantial evidence for the attribution. However, more work needs to be done before identification can become firm. The number sequence appears to be discrete from all the other currently identified main studios, and if the studio turns out not to be Esaki, then it is certainly one that had a prolific output of albums.’

The print measures 10” by 8.1” (254 mm by 205 mm) and is mounted on a cut-down section of album page that has been neatly split from its reverse side by a professional conservator.