Landscape to City: A Collection of 20th Century Japanese Prints
Landscape to City: A Collection of 20th Century Japanese Prints
Yoshida Hiroshi (1876-1950) | Sphinx - Night (Sufuinkusu) | Taisho period, early 20th century
Lot Closed
November 18, 02:34 PM GMT
Estimate
2,000 - 3,000 GBP
Lot Details
Description
Hiroshi Yoshida (1876-1950)
Sphinx - Night (Sufuinkusu)
Taisho period, early 20th century
woodblock print, signed in pencil in Roman script to the lower right Hiroshi Yoshida, and in sumi ink in Japanese Yoshida, sealed Hiroshi and with artist's seal in the shape of an Egyptian djed column, artist’s jizuri seal (self-printed), titled to the lower left as above, dated Taisho juyonen saku (made in 1925)
Horizontal oban: 26.8 x 41 cm., 10⅝ x 16⅛ in.
An element of exoticism and the concept of travel was central to Yoshida’s life and work. The artist travelled extensively in the United States, Europe, India and North Africa, from each designs in the form of his woodblock prints. At times, the same design of these views is printed in entirely different colours and effects to render variation in the time of day. Kendall H. Brown notes that a recurring characteristic of such works among Shin-Hanga artists ‘is the creation of a print series in which a single (keyblock) design is printed with different colour blocks to create variant impressions’.1 Although the technique derives from the woodblock print-process, there are parallels of this treatment with late nineteenth and early twentieth century European painting. Brown explains:
'Yoshida first deployed this technique in his series Sailing Boats, published by Watanabe in 1921, to suggest the same scene in morning, afternoon and evening light. This technique has been used sparingly in ukiyo-e, for instance to show Mount Fuji in different weather conditions and times of the day in Hokusai’s Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji (Fuji sanjurokkei). However, both the appearance of Yoshida’s prints and his experience as an oil painter who had travelled widely in Europe and America beginning in 1899, suggest that he adapted the idea, not from Hokusai, but from European works such as Money’s famous Grainstack series of 1891.'2
A varying impression of this design shows the great sphinx in the harsh daytime sun. Here, the use of blues and subtle overprinting of the colours suggest the starkly contrasting cool of the desert night.
1. Kendall H. Brown and Hollis Goodall-Cristante, Shin-hanga: New Prints in Modern Japan, (Los Angeles, 1996) p. 42.
2. Ibid.
For another impression of the same print in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, accession number 50.3250, go to:
https://collections.mfa.org/objects/254956
For an impression of the same design in daylight, also in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, accession number 50.3249, go to: