Landscape to City: 20th Century Japanese Prints Part II
Landscape to City: 20th Century Japanese Prints Part II
Yoshida Hiroshi (1876-1950) | Sailboats: Night (Hansen, yoru) | Taisho period, early 20th century
Lot Closed
May 10, 02:26 PM GMT
Estimate
8,000 - 10,000 GBP
Lot Details
Description
Yoshida Hiroshi (1876-1950)
Sailboats: Night (Hansen, yoru)
Taisho period, early 20th century
woodblock print, from the series Inland Sea (Seto Naikai shu), signed in ink in Japanese Yoshida, and in pencil in Roman script Hiroshi Yoshida, sealed Hiroshi, with artist's jizuri (self-printed) seal, titled to the lower left margin as above, dated Taisho jugonen saku (made in 1926)
Vertical dai oban: 42.6 x 38 cm., 16½ x 15 in.
This present design exists in six variants, each denoting a time of day or weather condition: Sailboats: Morning, Sailboats: Forenoon, Sailboats: Afternoon, Sailboats: Mist, Sailboats: Evening and Sailboats: Night. Three works depicting boats at sail in the Seto Inland Sea (Seto naikai) were previously published by Watanabe Shozaburo (1885-1962) earlier than this series, however the blocks for these were burned amidst the destruction of the Great Kanto Earthquake of September 1 1923.1
When Yoshida returned to this subject, he used a larger print size and experimented with variant printings. The breadth of expression achieved by Yoshida’s alternate printings in these works was highly praised at the time.2
In Sailing Boats: Night, an added block for the harbour lights and their watery reflections are seen in the distance. Suggestion of a further sail is faintly silhouetted along the horizon line. Overall, tonalities of purplish-blue graduate across the entire design through the use of bokashi. No doubt, the technicality and exact rendering of the effects caused by different times of day and weather on light contributed to the series success at the time. Nonetheless, the enduring sentiment of passage and repose, which embody the themes of journeying and travel so intrinsic to Yoshida’s work, certainly added to its appeal.
The Yoshida family are aware of two such variants of this design with printed colour in the margins: an impression of Sailboats: Mist with grey colouring in the margin, and the present lot with blue.
For further reference on the different variants of this design, see Carolyn M. Putney et al., Fresh Impressions: Early Modern Japanese Prints (Ohio, 2013) 266-d – 266-I, cat nos. 257-262.
1. Ogura Tadao et al., The Complete Woodblock Prints of Yoshida Hiroshi, (Tokyo, 1987) ps. 56-60, nos. 40-45.
For a similar impression of the same print in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, accession number 35.1949, go to: