Wikipedia:Picture peer review/Matthew C. Perry

Matthew C. Perry

Japanese woodblock print of Matthew C. Perry, c.1854

I think this is a fascinating portrait of the American commodore who compelled the opening of Japan in the 1850s. I just found it and added it to the Matthew C. Perry article. The artist is apparently unknown, but it is a contemporaneous Japanese portrait according to the LOC. According to the Peabody Essex Museum (discussing a near-identical version of the print owned by that museum), "This type of woodblock print of Perry would have circulated among the curious residents of Edo, since only a handful of people would have actually seen the commodore and his crew. The characters located across the top read from right to left, “A North American Figure” and “Portrait of Perry.” The artist, perhaps rendering a Westerner for the first time, exaggerated Perry’s features—the oblong face, down-turned eyes, bushy brown eyebrows, and large nose."[1]

• Nominated by: Calliopejen1 (talk) 20:19, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

Comments:

• Actually, on second thought maybe we should hold out until some of the crazier portraits from here are available in higher-res? Calliopejen1 (talk) 20:30, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
• I like it. I think it's more useful than some of those crazier portraits. Do you think its possible to get this one in slightly higher resolution, and/or get a print thats colored a bit more robustly? It meets the minimum resolution requirement, but it isn't amazingly sharp and high quality at full resolution, so, right now, it isn't certain to be promoted. People are generally extremely picky with images that are close the the minimum size requirement. - Enuja (talk) 02:37, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

• I really have no idea whether there's a better scan of another print out there. This is the only one held by the LOC, which seems to be the best source for these sort of historical prints. I've done some searching on google but haven't turned up anything else--and museums generally are pretty stingy about high-res scans so I doubt there are any available. Calliopejen1 (talk) 15:20, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

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