Landscape to City: A Collection of 20th Century Japanese Prints
Landscape to City: A Collection of 20th Century Japanese Prints
Kaburagi Kiyokata (1878-1973) | Woman at Akashi-cho, Tsukiji, Tokyo | Showa period, 20th century
Lot Closed
November 18, 02:33 PM GMT
Estimate
3,000 - 4,000 GBP
Lot Details
Description
Kaburagi Kiyokata (1878-1973)
Woman at Akashi-cho, Tsukiji, Tokyo
Showa period, 20th century
woodblock print, embellished with metallic pigment and mica details, signed Kiyokata, sealed Kiyo, published by the Association for the Preservation of Japanese Print Production (Nihon hanga seisaku hozonkai), carved by Takeda Kanazaki, printed by Yuna Toyokichi, dated Showa rokunen junigatsu toka insatsu (printed 10th December 1931), with stamped limited edition seal to the reverse Insatsu toroku bango, dai go, fukyo fukusei fukusha (Limited edition, unnumbered, reproduction not permitted)
61.6 x 36.6 cm., 24¼ x 14½ in.
Garbed in a deep, almost lacquer-black robe, a woman casts a side-long gaze as she stands beside a picket fence partially entangled in the vines of flowering morning glory (asagao).
Born in Tokyo in 1897, Kiyokata was an illustrator, painter and essayist. A student of Mizuno Toshikata (1866-1908), who himself apprenticed under the great artist of the Meiji period, Tsukioka Yoshitoshi (1839-1892), Kiyokata and his teacher adopted elements of the Maruyama-Shijo and Nihonga schools of painting in an effort to breathe new light into the then declining ukiyo-e [lit. floating world pictures] tradition. Woman of Tsukiji derived from his painting of the same subject four years earlier in 1927, which received the Prize of Imperial Arts Academy, and is regarded as his greatest work. In the manner of the Nihonga style, thin outlines and modulated colour are employed for volumetric effect, along with a graded wash and atmospheric approach to perspective.1
Throughout his long career, Kiyokata taught some of the most successful Shin-Hanga artists, including Kawase Hasui (1893-1957) and Ito Shinsui (1898-1972). He worked as the leading illustrator for the Jinmin-shinbun newspaper in 1899-1901 and for the Yomiuri-shinnbun newspaper om 1901-1902, then the leading paper in literary circles. He was awarded the Order of Cultural Merit in 1954. In 1998 the Kaburaki Kiyokata Memorial Art Museum was opened in Kamakura.
1. Kendall H. Brown and Hollis Goodall-Cristante, Shin-hanga: New Prints in Modern Japan, (Los Angeles, 1996) p. 27, fig. 18.
Kiyokata's works have recently been exhibited at the National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto, in 2022 for the retrospective exhibition marking the fiftieth-year anniversary after the artist's death: https://www.momak.go.jp/English/exhibitionarchive/2022/448.html
For another impression of the same print in the collection of the Harvard Art Museums, object number 1978.233, go to:
https://harvardartmuseums.org/art/184776
For a further impression of the same print in the collection of the Minneapolis Institute of Art, accession number 2002.161.33, go to:
https://collections.artsmia.org/art/62541/akashi-cho-in-tsukiji-kaburaki-kiyokata