Flower of the Tea

Mortimer Menpes

1901

Watercolour

Source: Japan, A Record in Colour, facing p. 80

In the tea-houses Menpes loved to see the young women, "waiting-girls — who move noiselessly through the rooms like gigantic butterflies flitting to and fro" (111). Here he sees them sitting quietly outside in the shadows, and finds something poetic about this scene too. — Jacqueline Banerjee

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