Modern Japanese Prints

This print was the first color woodblock print published from a design by Goyo. Commissioned by the publisher Watanabe Shozaburo (1885–1962), the print was produced by a carver and printers employed by Watanabe in a workshop that functioned similarly to those of the Edo period (1615–1868). Following the Edo period custom, Watanabe's circular seal is printed at the lower left, while Goyo, embarking on his first creation in this medium, placed a seal reading "Shisaku," meaning "trial production," below the date and his signature at the upper left.

In this print, Goyo hoped to achieve an image that conveyed the sense of solidity and volume from his drawings by using line and flat color without recourse to shading. The woman, kneeling beside a basin with her clothing folded nearby, wrings out a cloth to wash before entering the soaking tub. Her completely nude figure reflects Goyo's training in Western artistic practices such as drawing from life, which formed the basis of all his figure prints. Ultimately, Goyo was not satisfied with the result of his cooperation with Watanabe. Convinced that the artist should exert more control over the result, he turned to publishing his own prints after this single collaboration.

Yoshida was fascinated by the camel caravans he encountered during his travels in northern India and present-day Pakistan. Here he has used the same set of carved woodblocks to render day and night scenes. For the night scene (see F1996.27), he has eliminated some of the color block printings that represent the distant scenery in the day scene and has cut a block that leaves the paper unprinted at certain points to represent stars.

Torpedo hits a Russian Warship at the Battle of Port Arthur

1904

Kobayashi Kiyochika , (Japanese, Japanese, 1847-1915)
http://www.russojapanesewar.com/battle-pa.html

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Dream Worlds: Modern Japanese Prints and Paintings from the Robert O. Muller Collection
November 6, 2004–January 2, 2005
Arthur M. Sackler Gallery
In the spring of 2003, the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery received a bequest of more than 4,500 woodblock prints, representing 240 artists, from the world-renowned Robert O. Muller Collection of Japanese prints. Muller (1911–2003) was a Connecticut-based collector who over the course of seventy years had assembled one of the world's finest collections of Japanese prints from the late 1860s through the 1940s. This exhibition presented approximately 150 of these prints in a series of thematic categories that had particular resonance with Muller: the rendering of light in various atmospheric conditions; depictions of birds and beasts; theatricality, whether specific to the Japanese stage or in the more general sense of, narrative style; images of female beauty; and, printing technique in the service of effect. The prints were complemented by some paintings also drawn from Muller's holdings.

Muller collected in two distinct yet related areas. The first included the eclectic style of print that emerged in the last quarter of the 19th century—an era of experimentation that produced such diverse talents as Tsukioka Yoshitoshi (1839–92), who was famed for his flamboyant treatments of legend and historical events, and Kobayashi Kiyochika (1847–1915), whose studies in light and shadow were offered as an aesthetic alternative to the photograph. The second area of the Muller's collection comprises the world's most important grouping of prints created in the shin-hanga (new print) style. Shin-hanga was an entrepreneurial creation of the publisher Watanabe Shozaburo in the first decade of the 20th century. Watanabe managed a coterie of designer/artists who adapted traditional, idealized print subjects—theater, the pleasure quarters, bird and flower and landscape—to modern tastes. Included in the collection are superb representations of female beauty by Ito Shinsui (1898–1972), camp and vamping kabuki actors in male and female roles presented in exceptional designs by Yoshikawa Kanpo (1894–1979) and Natori Shunsen (1886–1960), the romanticized country and city views of Kawase Hasui (1883–1957) and numerous bird studies by Ohara Koson (1877–1945).

View the Dream Worlds online interactive.

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