Shotei | Nikko Shirakumo Waterfall
高橋松亭 Takahashi Shotei (1871–1945)
日光白云泷
Nikko Shirakumo Waterfall
1930
木版画 | 大短册纵绘 | 39cm x 17.5cm
Woodblock-print | Nagaban Tate-e | 39cm x 17.5cm
早期版次；颜色鲜艳；品相非常好
Fine impression, color and condition.
$3,700
Waterfalls were and are favorite sightseeing destinations in Japan, both in Edo times and today, and were often featured in Japanese woodblock prints, whether by Hokusai (most famously), Eisen, Hiroshige or others. The plunging water gave each artist the chance to test their creativity to portray these sights of majestic, raw natural energy.
Takahashi Shotei continued this tradition into the Shin Hanga era. This print is of Shirakumo Falls in Nikko National Park. It is not one of the nation’s most well-known falls, although it’s just downstream from one of the most famous, the narrow and towering Kegon Falls.
Shotei – or perhaps his brilliant and visionary publisher, Shōzaburō Watanabe – did something clever here. The design is in an unusual vertical Nagaban tate-e format, meaning it is much taller than it is wide, thus giving the cascading water plenty of extra space to noisily splash and crash its way down the glistening rocks. A few small sightseers cross a wooden bridge just more than halfway down, putting the fall’s immense size into relief. You can almost hear it thundering away.
Interested in purchasing?
Please contact us.
高橋松亭 Takahashi Shotei (1871–1945)
日光白云泷
Nikko Shirakumo Waterfall
1930
木版画 | 大短册纵绘 | 39cm x 17.5cm
Woodblock-print | Nagaban Tate-e | 39cm x 17.5cm
早期版次；颜色鲜艳；品相非常好
Fine impression, color and condition.
$3,700
Waterfalls were and are favorite sightseeing destinations in Japan, both in Edo times and today, and were often featured in Japanese woodblock prints, whether by Hokusai (most famously), Eisen, Hiroshige or others. The plunging water gave each artist the chance to test their creativity to portray these sights of majestic, raw natural energy.
Takahashi Shotei continued this tradition into the Shin Hanga era. This print is of Shirakumo Falls in Nikko National Park. It is not one of the nation’s most well-known falls, although it’s just downstream from one of the most famous, the narrow and towering Kegon Falls.
Shotei – or perhaps his brilliant and visionary publisher, Shōzaburō Watanabe – did something clever here. The design is in an unusual vertical Nagaban tate-e format, meaning it is much taller than it is wide, thus giving the cascading water plenty of extra space to noisily splash and crash its way down the glistening rocks. A few small sightseers cross a wooden bridge just more than halfway down, putting the fall’s immense size into relief. You can almost hear it thundering away.
Interested in purchasing?
Please contact us.
高橋松亭 Takahashi Shotei (1871–1945)
日光白云泷
Nikko Shirakumo Waterfall
1930
木版画 | 大短册纵绘 | 39cm x 17.5cm
Woodblock-print | Nagaban Tate-e | 39cm x 17.5cm
早期版次；颜色鲜艳；品相非常好
Fine impression, color and condition.
$3,700
Waterfalls were and are favorite sightseeing destinations in Japan, both in Edo times and today, and were often featured in Japanese woodblock prints, whether by Hokusai (most famously), Eisen, Hiroshige or others. The plunging water gave each artist the chance to test their creativity to portray these sights of majestic, raw natural energy.
Takahashi Shotei continued this tradition into the Shin Hanga era. This print is of Shirakumo Falls in Nikko National Park. It is not one of the nation’s most well-known falls, although it’s just downstream from one of the most famous, the narrow and towering Kegon Falls.
Shotei – or perhaps his brilliant and visionary publisher, Shōzaburō Watanabe – did something clever here. The design is in an unusual vertical Nagaban tate-e format, meaning it is much taller than it is wide, thus giving the cascading water plenty of extra space to noisily splash and crash its way down the glistening rocks. A few small sightseers cross a wooden bridge just more than halfway down, putting the fall’s immense size into relief. You can almost hear it thundering away.
Interested in purchasing?
Please contact us.
Takahashi Shotei (1871–1945)
Takahashi Shotei may have once been the most well-known Japanese woodblock print artist in the world, even if the Westerners who flooded Japan in the early part of the 20th Century didn’t know his name.
Watanabe Shozaburo hired him to design shinsaku-hanga (souvenir prints) to fulfill tourists’ demand for Ukiyoe-style woodblock landscape prints similar to those created in the past by masters of that genre, especially Hiroshige. These prints sold extremely well to this new audience, and were often in unusual sizes, to striking effect. (We wonder what Hiroshige would have thought of them.)
Shotei eventually took the name Hiroaki and produced hundreds of designs, but the blocks were destroyed in the Great Kanto earthquake of 1923. This is when Watanabe assigned him the unusual task of recreating his own works. He lived until 1945.