A RARE SCROLL PAINTING DEPICTING A YUREI (GHOST)Japan, late 19th centuryFinely painted in ink and watercolors on silk, with a silk brocade frame and mounted as a hanging scroll. Depicting a frightening female ghost, the lower area with vividly painted brushstrokes to show the ghost’s semi-corporeal form, arising from flames, shrouded in a long flowing robe, her skin a dark gray color, the black hair falling loosely over the shoulders, the face with a fierce yet pained expression. A painted ‘silk brocade frame’ surrounds the image of the yurei, with the ghost painted over this ‘frame’ in some areas, creating a strikingly dramatic effect. With bone jiku (roller ends).With two seals to the lower right 勝蓮之画 “surpassing lotus” and 楽天 “happy and heaven”, indicating a prayer directed at the painting rather than an artist signature, as artists often refused to sign their names on pictures of ghosts.SIZE 111 x 41.5 cm (image) and 173 x 46.5 cm (total)Condition: Very good condition with minor wear and little staining.Provenance: From a private collection in New York, USA.With a wood storage box.Yurei-zu are a genre of Japanese art consisting of painted or woodblock print images of ghosts, demons, and other supernatural beings. They are considered to be a subgenre of fuzokuga (‘pictures of manners and customs’). These types of art works reached the peak of their popularity in Japan in the mid- to late 19th century.Literature comparison:Compare to a painting of a ghost by Shimizu Setsudo in the Tokugen-in temple in Maibara, published in Tamura, Can (Fall 2020) The Ghost Scrolls of Manshu-in and Tokugen-in, Visual Anthropology Review, vol. 36, issue 2, Fall 2020, p. 343-360. Compare a related painting of a ghost by Kawanabe Kyosai in the collection of the British Museum, museum number 1996,1010,0.1.Auction comparison:Compare a related painting of a female ghost by Maruyama Okyo, dated late 18th century, at Bonhams, Fine Japanese Art, 12 November 2015, London, lot 225 (sold for 18,750 GBP).