context: painting > prints > technical

Fading

It shouldn't be forgotten that most of the older prints we see have faded badly. This is partly because of greater age, but also because the vegetable dyes in use for early prints didn't age well at all. The green-blue colours, in particular, have faded very badly, much worse than yellow-brown. As with old Western oil paintings, which have gone much browner over the centuries, we aren't seeing what was originally produced. What we see now is almost always duller, more sombre.

Inevitably, there are many collectors who will claim that this is better, that they prefer the more muted colours - I suspect these people are overly attached to notions of restraint and refinement in Japanese art. My feeling is that this isn't what these prints were about, and that prints are not the best territory in which to seek such qualities, so it doesn't make much sense to me, but I don't propose to argue that they are wrong in their tastes.

Great page on fading, with examples by John Fiorillo - it links on to more on the subject too.

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