About This Counted Cross Stitch Pattern

·        COUNTED CROSS STITCH PATTERN Charted for 14 count fabric and DMC Cotton Floss.

·        Finished size is 14 inches (196 stitches) by 12 inches (168 stitches).

·        Chart uses up to 40 colors DMC Cotton Floss. Full stitches only. No half stitches and no backstitching necessary.

·        We provide two charts both printed in black ink on bright white 11" by 17" paper.  Chart #1 is a single page chart. Chart #2 (tired eyes) is a 4 page enlarged chart that eases eye strain.

·        This is a pattern that is used to sew and to create a counted cross stitch picture. This is NOT a completed product. It is NOT a kit, it contains no floss or fabric.

Uemura Shōen, 1875–1949, was a Japanese style painter from the Meiji period to the Taishō and Shōwa periods.  Uemura Shōen was the pseudonym of an important artist in Meiji, Taishō and early Shōwa period Japanese painting. Her real name was Uemura Tsune. Shōen was known primarily for her bijin-ga paintings. Bijin-ga is a generic term for pictures of beautiful women in Japanese art, especially in woodblock printing of the ukiyo-e genre, which predate photography. Ukiyo-e is a genre of woodblock prints and paintings that was produced in Japan from the 17th century to the 19th century. But her portraits go beyond this traditional pattern. Shōen’s paintings and prints show a modern instead of an idealized picture of women.

Many of the works of Uemura Shoen show portraits of women, sometimes with children in a realistic, refined style. Uemura is often called a bijin-ga painter, a painter of the traditional Japanese subject of so-called beautiful women. In 1941 Shoen Uemura became a member of the Imperial Art Academy. And in 1948 she became the first woman to receive the Order of Cultural Merit.

Like several others of her contemporary Japanese fellow artists, she would most probably have made an International career if the time-schedule of her life had been a different one. She belonged to the generation of artists whose mature years happened to coincide with the great depression of the world economy, then the rising political tensions with the U.S. and finally the war between the two countries.