Yoshida | Canal in Venice
吉田博 Hiroshi Yoshida (1876–1950)
威尼斯运河
Canal in Venice
1925
木版画 | 纵绘大大判 | 42cm x 28cm
Woodblock-print | Large Oban tata-e | 42cm x 28cm
自摺；品相近完美
Jizuri seal; great condition
$6,300
就在游历欧洲后返回日本的那一年，1925年，吉田博成立了吉田版画工作室，着手开始出版著名的木版画系列《美国系列》和《欧洲系列》，正式开启了崭新的创作生涯。
吉田博曾经多次到访威尼斯，并以其为主题创作了多幅油画与木版画作品。这座碧波上的水城由118个小岛、一条主运河的177条水道与401座桥梁连成一体，放眼望去，处处是风景。在本作中，吉田博选取了一个高度约为建筑二层的视角，将运河与对岸的几栋威尼斯式传统小楼用风景写生的方式简要勾勒。从屋顶、窗棂的排线，与街道行人与路灯的轮廓线可以看出，此时的吉田博依然对线条有着较强的依赖。但一旦将视线转向运河的水面，就能领略到他标志性的带着浓郁流动水彩感的独特版画风格：经过数十次摺印而形成的精妙波纹仿佛在不停地盘旋扩散，让一条条贡多拉也好似航行在裸眼3D立体画上，体积感真实而饱满，使观者一瞬间就能置身于运河之城，亦足可见吉田博的深厚风景画功力。
In the waning days of Ukiyoe, when Yokohama-e prints dominated, many late-period artists produced views of foreign cities and harbors they’d never visited. Some of these were quite fanciful and bore little resemblance to the actual places. But just more than 50 years later, Japanese artists were free to travel the world, and Hiroshi Yoshida was one of the first.
Here we see a classic view of the Grand Canal in Venice – itself one of the greatest works of art humankind has produced. We can only imagine Yoshida’s reaction when he first gazed upon this fabled, water-borne metropolis with its winding canals, Rococo Palazzos and singing Gondoliers. (One suspects they were just for tourists, even back then.)
Yoshida sketched this design on his third trip to Europe in the early 1920s; his training and background as a watercolor painter is quite evident. (In fact, he came relatively late to print-making.) The currents swirl majestically, and we get a visceral sense of the muted Venetian sun playing on the facades. It is as painterly a Japanese print as has ever been produced.
Interested in purchasing?
Please contact us.
吉田博 Hiroshi Yoshida (1876–1950)
威尼斯运河
Canal in Venice
1925
木版画 | 纵绘大大判 | 42cm x 28cm
Woodblock-print | Large Oban tata-e | 42cm x 28cm
自摺；品相近完美
Jizuri seal; great condition
$6,300
就在游历欧洲后返回日本的那一年，1925年，吉田博成立了吉田版画工作室，着手开始出版著名的木版画系列《美国系列》和《欧洲系列》，正式开启了崭新的创作生涯。
吉田博曾经多次到访威尼斯，并以其为主题创作了多幅油画与木版画作品。这座碧波上的水城由118个小岛、一条主运河的177条水道与401座桥梁连成一体，放眼望去，处处是风景。在本作中，吉田博选取了一个高度约为建筑二层的视角，将运河与对岸的几栋威尼斯式传统小楼用风景写生的方式简要勾勒。从屋顶、窗棂的排线，与街道行人与路灯的轮廓线可以看出，此时的吉田博依然对线条有着较强的依赖。但一旦将视线转向运河的水面，就能领略到他标志性的带着浓郁流动水彩感的独特版画风格：经过数十次摺印而形成的精妙波纹仿佛在不停地盘旋扩散，让一条条贡多拉也好似航行在裸眼3D立体画上，体积感真实而饱满，使观者一瞬间就能置身于运河之城，亦足可见吉田博的深厚风景画功力。
In the waning days of Ukiyoe, when Yokohama-e prints dominated, many late-period artists produced views of foreign cities and harbors they’d never visited. Some of these were quite fanciful and bore little resemblance to the actual places. But just more than 50 years later, Japanese artists were free to travel the world, and Hiroshi Yoshida was one of the first.
Here we see a classic view of the Grand Canal in Venice – itself one of the greatest works of art humankind has produced. We can only imagine Yoshida’s reaction when he first gazed upon this fabled, water-borne metropolis with its winding canals, Rococo Palazzos and singing Gondoliers. (One suspects they were just for tourists, even back then.)
Yoshida sketched this design on his third trip to Europe in the early 1920s; his training and background as a watercolor painter is quite evident. (In fact, he came relatively late to print-making.) The currents swirl majestically, and we get a visceral sense of the muted Venetian sun playing on the facades. It is as painterly a Japanese print as has ever been produced.
Interested in purchasing?
Please contact us.
吉田博 Hiroshi Yoshida (1876–1950)
威尼斯运河
Canal in Venice
1925
木版画 | 纵绘大大判 | 42cm x 28cm
Woodblock-print | Large Oban tata-e | 42cm x 28cm
自摺；品相近完美
Jizuri seal; great condition
$6,300
就在游历欧洲后返回日本的那一年，1925年，吉田博成立了吉田版画工作室，着手开始出版著名的木版画系列《美国系列》和《欧洲系列》，正式开启了崭新的创作生涯。
吉田博曾经多次到访威尼斯，并以其为主题创作了多幅油画与木版画作品。这座碧波上的水城由118个小岛、一条主运河的177条水道与401座桥梁连成一体，放眼望去，处处是风景。在本作中，吉田博选取了一个高度约为建筑二层的视角，将运河与对岸的几栋威尼斯式传统小楼用风景写生的方式简要勾勒。从屋顶、窗棂的排线，与街道行人与路灯的轮廓线可以看出，此时的吉田博依然对线条有着较强的依赖。但一旦将视线转向运河的水面，就能领略到他标志性的带着浓郁流动水彩感的独特版画风格：经过数十次摺印而形成的精妙波纹仿佛在不停地盘旋扩散，让一条条贡多拉也好似航行在裸眼3D立体画上，体积感真实而饱满，使观者一瞬间就能置身于运河之城，亦足可见吉田博的深厚风景画功力。
In the waning days of Ukiyoe, when Yokohama-e prints dominated, many late-period artists produced views of foreign cities and harbors they’d never visited. Some of these were quite fanciful and bore little resemblance to the actual places. But just more than 50 years later, Japanese artists were free to travel the world, and Hiroshi Yoshida was one of the first.
Here we see a classic view of the Grand Canal in Venice – itself one of the greatest works of art humankind has produced. We can only imagine Yoshida’s reaction when he first gazed upon this fabled, water-borne metropolis with its winding canals, Rococo Palazzos and singing Gondoliers. (One suspects they were just for tourists, even back then.)
Yoshida sketched this design on his third trip to Europe in the early 1920s; his training and background as a watercolor painter is quite evident. (In fact, he came relatively late to print-making.) The currents swirl majestically, and we get a visceral sense of the muted Venetian sun playing on the facades. It is as painterly a Japanese print as has ever been produced.
Interested in purchasing?
Please contact us.
Hiroshi Yoshida (1876-1950)
From middle school in Kyushu to travelling the globe.
Little Hiroshi Ueda was only 15 when Kasaburo Yoshida, his art teacher in Fukuoka, recognized his talent. So what did he do? He adopted him. Soon enough, young Hiroshi was studying painting in the fast-moving whirl of Meiji Tokyo, a world away.
But that was only the beginning. In time the young man would rise to fame as a Shin Hanga (New Print) master, focusing mostly on landscapes, second in reputation only to Kawase Hasui. But unlike Hasui, who’s views were all set in Japan, Yoshida travelled the world to find compositions and to learn and experiment with Western painting techniques. His fine eye would capture scenes as disparate as the Matterhorn, Venice, The Golden Temple in Rangoon – even Pittsburgh, a gritty industrial city that he would imbue with smoky mystery and romance.
And it wasn’t only his designs that focused on the West. Yoshida was also one of the first Japanese woodblock print artists to gain a reputation beyond Japan.
At first, it was his paintings that were recognized. He had a show at the Detroit Museum of Art in 1899, one in Paris in 1900 and had his work featured at the St Louis World’s Fair in 1903, among other places.
Back in Japan, when he was 44, Yoshida met a man who’d have as big an effect on his career as his middle school art teacher -- Shōzaburō Watanabe, the father of Shin Hanga. Watanabe published several of Yoshida’s works, but their partnership was cut short when his workshop was destroyed in the Kanto earthquake of 1923. Nonetheless, the die was cast. That same year, Yoshida again visited the United States and noticed the burgeoning interest in Japanese prints – and all things Japanese.
He returned home and put together his own studio. His firm control of the process -- from preparatory sketch to final printing -- was one reason his prints have such a singular quality; there is nothing quite like them. Another is his painterly approach. Some works appear almost as if they fell off the tip of a watercolor brush, while others have the muscular values of oils. Looking at his many paintings and then his print designs, it’s easy to see how one grew into the other.
Yoshida started something of a family dynasty. His wife Fujio was a talented painter and printmaker, as was his elder son, Toshi, and his wife, Kiso. His younger son, Hodaka – named for Hiroshi Yoshida’s favorite mountain -- was a modernist designer in the Sosako Hanga print movement in the 20th Century, as were his wife and daughter.
Hiroshi Yoshida’s first editions are usually (but not always) identified by his pencil-drawn signatures and the jizuri (self-printed) seal, usually in the upper left margin. Other scholars and dealers have shared a few interesting tidbits. One is that it was his wife who signed the prints for Western export (prints to be sold in Japan didn’t have a hand-drawn signature), and the other is that his key blocks were made of zinc, so they never wore down.
Hiroshi Yoshida died on April 15, 1950, leaving behind a legacy in art and artists. His key blocks will never fade, nor will his wondrous body of work.