Yoshida | A Little Restaurant at Night
吉田博 Hiroshi Yoshida (1876–1950)
料理屋之夜
A Little Restaurant at Night
1933
木版画 | 纵绘大大判 | 39.3cm x 27.5cm
Woodblock-print | Large Oban tata-e | 39.3cm x 27.5cm
自摺；铅笔亲笔签名；品相近完美
Signed in brush and in pencil, with jizuri seal; fine condition
Shin Hanga was the “new print” movement, but much of what it depicted was old—Old Japan, classic Japan, nostalgic Japan. And few images from this genre succeed so wonderfully as those Hiroshi Yoshida designs showing traditional facades at night, always with a recent downpour creating blurry reflections on the rain-slicked street.
Here we see a traditional restaurant, its front illuminated by lanterns, with a kimono-clad woman — almost ghost-like — emerging holding a package wrapped in furoshiki. Perhaps she’s just enjoyed a bowl of noodles, or a grilled fish, and is heading to her nearby home. We can’t help but sense that there is sadness here. Or maybe she is just deep in thought.
Multiple, overlayed printings of ink, in a predominately sepia palette, help create almost magical translucent effects of water and light. Look how the lanterns bathe the bottoms of the wooden eaves in a golden hue, while the roof and indigo sky above are so dark as to be almost indistinct. Almost.
This is no famous site, but, rather, a tiny vignette. It is warm and comforting and lonely all at the same time. Here Yoshida makes the mundane so very romantic indeed.
华灯初上，骤雨稍歇，涌起积水的路面荡漾着微波，倒映着许是东京市内某家料理屋前的层层辉光。木质屋檐下的各色灯笼明亮，小圆窗中透出的屋内光芒使人心生暖意。最右侧的窗台旁，半朵粉云摇曳，许是新采撷下的一枝樱花。店门前，一位身着墨绿衣装，披挂胭脂色披肩的优雅女士正面带浅笑地准备离去。光与影的浪漫，恰好凝结于此刻。
从某种意义上而言，吉田博的绘画技法与莫奈有着异曲同工之妙，皆是以多个人眼捕捉的瞬间为底稿，而后加以整合取舍，最终呈现出一幅完全不同于摄影作品的“印象”之美。那些流动的、摇晃的光影并不完全符合现实，却更适合入眼入心。
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吉田博 Hiroshi Yoshida (1876–1950)
料理屋之夜
A Little Restaurant at Night
1933
木版画 | 纵绘大大判 | 39.3cm x 27.5cm
Woodblock-print | Large Oban tata-e | 39.3cm x 27.5cm
自摺；铅笔亲笔签名；品相近完美
Signed in brush and in pencil, with jizuri seal; fine condition
Shin Hanga was the “new print” movement, but much of what it depicted was old—Old Japan, classic Japan, nostalgic Japan. And few images from this genre succeed so wonderfully as those Hiroshi Yoshida designs showing traditional facades at night, always with a recent downpour creating blurry reflections on the rain-slicked street.
Here we see a traditional restaurant, its front illuminated by lanterns, with a kimono-clad woman — almost ghost-like — emerging holding a package wrapped in furoshiki. Perhaps she’s just enjoyed a bowl of noodles, or a grilled fish, and is heading to her nearby home. We can’t help but sense that there is sadness here. Or maybe she is just deep in thought.
Multiple, overlayed printings of ink, in a predominately sepia palette, help create almost magical translucent effects of water and light. Look how the lanterns bathe the bottoms of the wooden eaves in a golden hue, while the roof and indigo sky above are so dark as to be almost indistinct. Almost.
This is no famous site, but, rather, a tiny vignette. It is warm and comforting and lonely all at the same time. Here Yoshida makes the mundane so very romantic indeed.
华灯初上，骤雨稍歇，涌起积水的路面荡漾着微波，倒映着许是东京市内某家料理屋前的层层辉光。木质屋檐下的各色灯笼明亮，小圆窗中透出的屋内光芒使人心生暖意。最右侧的窗台旁，半朵粉云摇曳，许是新采撷下的一枝樱花。店门前，一位身着墨绿衣装，披挂胭脂色披肩的优雅女士正面带浅笑地准备离去。光与影的浪漫，恰好凝结于此刻。
从某种意义上而言，吉田博的绘画技法与莫奈有着异曲同工之妙，皆是以多个人眼捕捉的瞬间为底稿，而后加以整合取舍，最终呈现出一幅完全不同于摄影作品的“印象”之美。那些流动的、摇晃的光影并不完全符合现实，却更适合入眼入心。
Interested in purchasing?
Please contact us.
吉田博 Hiroshi Yoshida (1876–1950)
料理屋之夜
A Little Restaurant at Night
1933
木版画 | 纵绘大大判 | 39.3cm x 27.5cm
Woodblock-print | Large Oban tata-e | 39.3cm x 27.5cm
自摺；铅笔亲笔签名；品相近完美
Signed in brush and in pencil, with jizuri seal; fine condition
Shin Hanga was the “new print” movement, but much of what it depicted was old—Old Japan, classic Japan, nostalgic Japan. And few images from this genre succeed so wonderfully as those Hiroshi Yoshida designs showing traditional facades at night, always with a recent downpour creating blurry reflections on the rain-slicked street.
Here we see a traditional restaurant, its front illuminated by lanterns, with a kimono-clad woman — almost ghost-like — emerging holding a package wrapped in furoshiki. Perhaps she’s just enjoyed a bowl of noodles, or a grilled fish, and is heading to her nearby home. We can’t help but sense that there is sadness here. Or maybe she is just deep in thought.
Multiple, overlayed printings of ink, in a predominately sepia palette, help create almost magical translucent effects of water and light. Look how the lanterns bathe the bottoms of the wooden eaves in a golden hue, while the roof and indigo sky above are so dark as to be almost indistinct. Almost.
This is no famous site, but, rather, a tiny vignette. It is warm and comforting and lonely all at the same time. Here Yoshida makes the mundane so very romantic indeed.
华灯初上，骤雨稍歇，涌起积水的路面荡漾着微波，倒映着许是东京市内某家料理屋前的层层辉光。木质屋檐下的各色灯笼明亮，小圆窗中透出的屋内光芒使人心生暖意。最右侧的窗台旁，半朵粉云摇曳，许是新采撷下的一枝樱花。店门前，一位身着墨绿衣装，披挂胭脂色披肩的优雅女士正面带浅笑地准备离去。光与影的浪漫，恰好凝结于此刻。
从某种意义上而言，吉田博的绘画技法与莫奈有着异曲同工之妙，皆是以多个人眼捕捉的瞬间为底稿，而后加以整合取舍，最终呈现出一幅完全不同于摄影作品的“印象”之美。那些流动的、摇晃的光影并不完全符合现实，却更适合入眼入心。
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.