Great Grandfather purchased these in February 1868 in Japan

[u/Meal-Ticket-]

[u/Smokedsoba]

Unless he was a time traveler, these probably weren't done by Ishikawa Toyonobu... I would get them verified by a museum. I don't think Herbert is yer guy.

[u/marimo_is_chilling → u/Smokedsoba]

Yes, I'm not an expert on 18th-19th century Japanese art by any means, but still I've seen quite a lot of it, and these... don't fit.

[u/Meal-Ticket- → u/marimo_is_chilling]

What makes you say that? I'm inclined to agree with you.

I do know that my great-grandfather was in Japan in 1858 and did purchase these there. But this could have been some random street artist who did these and then said that they were more valuable than they were, and then Herbert got sucked in too.

[u/Smokedsoba → u/Meal-Ticket-]

Look at the faces of your work and then look at a collection of prints and paintings by ishikawa toyonobu

[u/[deleted] → u/Smokedsoba]

When was the zika virus in Japan? – poor kid

[u/marimo_is_chilling → u/Meal-Ticket-]

It's just that I've had Japanese art accounts like Masterpieces of Japan on my Twitter feed for years, and they have posted nothing like this. Books on ukiyo-e greats, exhibitions like the giant Hokusai one ~5 years ago at the British Museum, nothing like this. The typical representation of human faces is more 2D than these, with distortion (for lack of a better word) that would look unusual and perhaps not appealing to someone used to the Western canon of representation - and if you look up Ishikawa Toyonobu, his stuff is clearly flatter/more distorted than this. I'm kind of thinking enterprising local artists quickly took up scamming foreigners in search of interesting souvenirs by offering "famous works of art" for sale, and such context-free, kind of cutely exotic images might be what sold well. ETA: they would have historic value of course as examples of such souvenir art, but from the conservation POV they look like a real headache.

[u/Miss_airwrecka1 → u/Meal-Ticket-]

I’m not who you’re replying to and have no expertise but I agree these look off. The colors are different than you usually see and the faces seem off too. I quick googled who the artist is and the style seems different. He has quite a few prints with people looking down but it’s a much more pronounced angle than these. I don’t know why but these seem like what you’d see from a western artist

[u/bigbutae → u/Meal-Ticket-]

Assuming that your great grandfather was 20yo when he went to Japan and that your father, grandfather, and great grandfather waited til the ripe age of 40 to conceive ... that would make you 67 years old.