Travels with the Master: Pittsburgh Night (Meishou to no tabi: Pittsubagu no Yuro)
Signed in silver kanji, Bin-ni, followed by red circular artist’s seal, BINNIE, with series title in upper left margin, Meishou to no tabi, followed by print title, Pittsubagu no Yoru, with Binnie embossed at center bottom margin, and titled, numbered, and signed in pencil, Pittsburgh Night, 6/100, Paul Binnie, 2024
Chuban yoko-e 8 5/8 by 12 in., 22 by 30.4 cm
This print is the eighth design in Binnie’s ongoing landscape series, Travels with the Master, which pays homage to the shin-hanga landscape artist, Hiroshi Yoshida (1876-1950). Inspired by Yoshida’s 1929 small format print, Evening in Pittsburgh (Pittsubaagu no yu), Binnie visited Pittsburgh in 2013 while en route to Ohio for the opening of the landmark Fresh Impressions shin-hanga exhibition at the Toledo Museum of Art, where he gave a lecture and print demonstration, and his own work was on view in a related installation on contemporary Japanese prints.
Both works depict the city’s skyline as seen from the North Shore neighborhood facing south across the Allegheny River, near the point where it meets the Ohio and Monongahela Rivers. Yoshida depicted a hazy view of Pittsburgh, which at the time was a major industrial city; the skyscrapers in the background disappear into a soft grey-purple smog, and smoke billows out from the nearby steel mills. Architectural details found in period photographs indicate that Yoshida depicted the old Seventh Street Bridge, which was demolished in 1925 and replaced with what is now known as the Andy Warhol Bridge, however, the positioning of the buildings in the background are in closer alignment with the old Sixth Street Bridge, which was also dismantled in 1927 and replaced with what is now known as the Roberto Clemente Bridge (both are part of a trio of matching bridges known as the Three Sisters).
Binnie’s print on the other hand captures a much cleaner and modern city which no longer counts steel as its major industry. The air is clear, and the purples and blues of the night are vibrant and bold. Arriving in the late afternoon with waning light, Binnie walked along the Three Rivers Heritage Trail in search of the vantage corresponding with Yoshida’s perspective (including the distinctive double peaked roof of the Fulton Building on the opposite shore), which he located at the Allegheny Landing park and sketched as twilight descended over the city. The print features complex bokashi shadings to capture the transition of light on the illuminated buildings, and the support columns of the bridge are printed in black urushi-e (lacquer printing) to highlight the solid structure and to stand out against the blue keyblock.
Stone House in Los Polvazares (Rosu, Poruvasa-resu no ishi no ie)
titled in penciled Japanese, Rosu, Poruvasa-resu no ishi no ie, numbered 32/50 (or possibly 31/50), and signed and dated Hodaka Yoshida ’90, 1990
22 by 28 3/8 in., 56 by 72 cm
Starting in 1973, Hodaka began to use his adapt his photographs for prints, combining photoetching with color woodblock printing. Eugene Skibbe notes that Hodaka had been well known as a photographer before he became recognized as a print artist. In 1958 one of his photographs was used on the cover of Camera Mainichi, and in 1960 one of his photographs was included in the Modern Photographs Exhibition at the Tokyo National Museum of Modern Art.
In A Japanese Legacy, Skibbe explains in detail Yoshida’s process of integrating his photographs with zinc etching and woodblock print. First he made a photocopy of the photograph, enlarging it to to the scale of the print. Then he cut out some details and darkened others, possibly adding cutouts from other photographs to create a photomontage. He transferred the photomontage to a zinc plate chemically, which became the outline block. He cut separate woodblocks for each area to be printed with color, and typically printed the color blocks first, finishing with the zinc plate.
Provenance:
Yoshida Family Collection
References:
Eugene M. Skibbe,Yoshida Hodaka: Magic, Artifact, and Art, in A Japanese Legacy: Four Generations of Yoshida Family Artists, The Minneapolis Institute of Arts, 2002, pp. 110-120 (see note 22), p. 143 (on printing process)
Hodaka Yoshida: Walls of Wonder, Mitaka City Gallery of Art, 2019, Tatsuo Matsuyama, pp. 13-16; Ayomi Yoshida, pp. 116-118; Satoko Tomita, pp. 126-129; p. 102, no. 106
watercolor on English paper; signed at lower left, H. Yoshida; inscribed on verso in Japanese with pencil, #74 Tsukiyo no Fuji, ca. 1906 or later
13 1/4 by 19 7/8 in., 33.8 by 50.4 cm
In September 1899, Yoshida and his colleague Nakagawa Hachiro (1877-1922) from the Fudosha painting academy each bought one-way tickets to the United States. The young men were inspired in part by the success of Yoshida’s friend, Miyake Katsumi (1874-1954), who had journeyed to the States in 1897 and had made enough money selling his watercolors that he was able to stay until 1899. Yoshida was also prompted by a letter of invitation from the collector Charles L. Freer (1854-1919) who he had met when Freer requested an introduction from the Samurai Tading Company in Yokohama after buying one of Yoshida’s watercolors. After their ship departed in October from the port of Yokohama there was a fire onboard, but fortunately they, and their art, survived the ordeal. When the two arrived in San Francisco they went directly to Detroit and were disappointed to discover their potential patron was away. In a remarkable reversal of fortune, while sketching at the Detroit Museum of Art they met the Director, Armand Griffith, who took an interest in their work and organized a very successful selling exhibition at the museum which included 92 works by Yoshida and 25 by Nakagawa. A total of 40 pieces sold (33 by Yoshida), including onene large painting (brilliantly titled ‘Memories of Japan’) which was purchased by a special subscription by the citizens of Detroit for $500 (the equivalent of $16,750 today).
In January of 1900, Yoshida and Nakagawa built on their triumph in Detroit with a similar maneuver in Boston where they held an exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts, raising almost $3,000 more. This was followed by shows in Washington D.C. and Providence, Rhode Island. They used the funds raised from the shows to journey to Europe in the Spring, visiting England in the summer and Paris to see the World Exposition where Yoshida had a monumental painting (nearly 5 ft high and almost 9 ft long) included in the Japanese section, and then on to Germany, Italy and Switzerland. Upon hearing that a group of four of his fellow students from the Fudosha academy were en route to the states, Yoshida returned to meet up with them in Boston in November 1900. The ‘Six Artists’ assembled the Exhibition of Water-Color Paintings by Japanese Painters which opened at the Boston Art Club on December 5th. The exhibition was covered in the Boston Globe and drew more than 18,000 visitors a week. Of the 285 works on view, nearly half sold and sales totaled $4,725 (almost $160,000 today).
This pattern was repeated when Yoshida returned to the states in 1903, this time traveling with the daughter of his adoptive father, Fujio Yoshida (1887-1987), who was also an artist (they would later marry in 1907). The ‘Brother-Sister’ tour began with their arrival early in January 1904 in Seatle and they traveled by train to Boston. In February they held a ‘Two Artists’ exhibition at the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, followed by several exhibitions zigzagging in the region: Worcester in early March, back to Providence at the Deborah Cook Sayles Library on March 19, Walter Kimball’s Gallery in Boston on April 1, W. H. Stadden’s Galleries in Springfield on April 20. In May, three of Hiroshi Yoshida’s paintings were shown at the St. Louis World Exposition. By October they were exhibiting in Chicago, November was in Cleveland, and December in Pittsburg. In January 1905 they exhibited at Clausen Gallery in New York City followed by shows in Philadelphia and Washington D.C., then back up to Boston for a show at the Doll & Richards Gallery in December 1905. In the first half of 1906 Fujio and Yoshida travelled from Boston to Florida, and then on May 1st they departed for England, arriving in Liverpool on May 9th.
The extraordinary enthusiasm for the watercolors by Japanese artists offered in these traveling exhibitions, and the appreciation for works by Hiroshi Yoshida in particular, is the reason why many of Yoshida’s finest early paintings are located in the West. Remarkably, this view of Mount Fuji was acquired in England, and the paper itself bears a watermark which reads (from lower left verso): 1906 ENGLAND, where he undoubtably acquired the paper and possibly produced the watercolor based on his own sketches from earlier travels. The distinctive misty atmosphere is similar to several Yoshida watercolors dated from circa 1900 to 1907.
sumi ink and color on silk; rainy landscape with boat at water’s edge and mountain in the distance, signed in sumi ink Hakuho with red circle seal Yoshida Hiroshi in; with tomobako titled Uke sansuizu, followed by the signature Yoshida Hakuho hitsu, early 1920s
painting 50 1/4 by 16 1/8 in., 127.5 by 40.8 cm
overall 77 by 21 in., 195.7 by 53.3 cm
sumi ink and color on silk; signed with kakihan Hiroshi with red square seal Hakuho, ca. 1911 or later
painting 49 5/8 by 17 3/8., 126 by 44 cm
overall 85 by 22 7/8 in., 216 by 58 cm
As an artist of nature, Yoshida was unwavering in his devotion to producing images from his own personal observations and travels. He embarked on annual sketch tours, frequently to the region surrounding the Inland Sea. In early 1911 he was part of a ‘Ten-Men Sketch Tour’ to Shikoku and Kyushu with nine other artists (documented in the illustrated book, Junin Shasei Ryoko).
sumi ink and color on silk; signed with kakihan Hiroshi with red circle seal Yoshida Hiroshi in, ca. 1907-20s
painting 50 3/8 by 13 3/4 in., 128 by 35 cm
overall 79 1/8 by 19 1/4 in., 201 by 49 cm
In the period after Yoshida returned from his second trip abroad in 1907, he was increasingly becoming well-known in Japan for his accomplished watercolor and oil paintings and recognized as a leader among modern artists. However, Yoshida did not limit himself to Western materials and continued to produce numerous hanging scrolls utilizing sumi ink on paper or silk, in pursuit of his own unique hybrid of Japanese style modern painting.
In the seminal publication The Complete Woodblock Prints of Yoshida Hiroshi, Yasunaga Koichi quotes Yoshida reflecting on his creative process: “I have never met any artist who is painting work similar to mine. This realization made me perservere and develop my own style of painting.” And eschewing his contemporaries who seemed too enamored with Western art: “…when I saw Western art while overseas, I gained the confidence in maintaining my own style and developing it to the maximum, regardless of what other Japanese artists were doing.”
While his Western-style paintings, often at least begun on site en plein air, appear to depict faithful renderings of their subjects, it seems he allowed himself more artistic license in the scroll format, which were surely produced strictly in the studio. This composition exemplifies Yoshida’s modern impressionist style in the foreground and deft manipulation of the sumi ink in the background, successfully evoking a layer of mist lingering over a stand of trees with a fantastical Chinese-style mountain range looming beyond. A painting titled Mountain Stream (Keiryu) dated to the Taisho Period (1912-26) in the collection of the MOA Museum of Art utlizies a similar color palette with a stream and village in the foreground and distant mountains rendered in wash in the background.
sumi ink on silk; signed with kakihan Hiroshi with red square seal Hakuho; with tomobako titled Mouko sangetsu and signed with kakihan Hiroshi, ca. 1920s
painting: 48 5/8 by 13 1/4 in., 123 by 33.5 cm
overall: 78 by 18 1/4 in., 198 by 46.5 cm
MYosemite Valley (Cathedral Rocks)
oil on canvas; signed at lower left, H. Yoshida; with wood plaque attached to verso stretcher (presumably from original frame) inscribed in sumi ink with title, Beikoku Yosemite Kokuritsu Koen, Kasedoraru Rokku no zu (America, Yosemite National Park, Picture of Cathedral Rocks), and dated, Taisho jusannen, rokugatsu, Yoshida Hiroshi ga (Taisho 13 [1924], June, painted by Yoshida Hiroshi), and with circular collector’s seal PB PAUL BINNIE COLLECTION stamped on verso stretcher and frame, 1924
painting 17 7/8 by 13 1/4 in., 45.5 by 33.5 cm
frame 22 3/8 by 17 5/8 in., 56.7 by 44.7 cm
During Hiroshi and Fujio Yoshida’s North American trip of 1923-1925, they found time to tour the natural splendors to be found in the West, producing several inspired landscape paintings (some of which would subsequently become woodblock prints). Their travels took them as far north as Moraine Lake in Alberta, Canada, and they visited various American landmarks including Mount Rainier in Washington, Mount Hood in Oregon, Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, the Grand Canyon in Arizona, and this location in the Yosemite Valley, California. The view is of a distinctive formation of three peaks known as the Cathedral Rocks which face the towering El Capitan, the subject of a print in his 1926 United States series. This composition relates to a larger oil painting almost double the size of nearly the same view illustrated in the 1987 catalogue raisonné of Yoshida’s woodblock prints, as well as the 1996 Fukuoka and the 2000 MOA Yoshida Hiroshi exhibition catalogs.
Mount Breithorn
Oil on canvas
Signed H. Yoshida to lower left corner, ca. 1925
Painting: 17 7/8 x 23 7/8 in. (45.5 x 60.6 cm)
Frame: 23 3/4 x 29 5/8 in. (60.2 x 75.3 cm)
sumi ink on silk; signed in sumi ink, Hakuho, with red kakihan Hiroshi, ca. early 1920s
painting 48 by 16 1/8 in., 122 by 41 cm
overall 76 3/4 by 20 7/8 in., 195 by 53 cm
This painting seems to relate directly to two other published sumi ink paintings, Farmhouse in Snow (ca. early 1920s), and Snow Scene (ca. 1912-1926) featuring very similar views of a stream winding through a wintry landscape with bare trees and snow-covered houses in the distance.
Oil on canvas
Signed at lower left, H. Yoshida, ca. January – February 1924
Painting 24 1/4 by 18 1/4 in., 61.5 by 46.2 cm
Frame 29 3/4 by 23 5/8 in., 75.5 by 60 cm
In December 1923, Hiroshi and Fujio Yoshida departed for the United States on board the passenger liner Shinzo Maru in order to courier a traveling exhibition of paintings and prints to be sold for the benefit those suffering in the aftermath of the Great Kanto Earthquake of September 1, 1923. The selling exhibition included their own paintings as well as works by fellow members of the Pacific Painting Society (Taiheiyo gakai) as well as woodblock prints Ito Shinsui (1898-1972) and Kawase Hasui (1883-1957) published by Watanabe Shozaburo (1885-1962). All told, there were approximately 150 paintings and 50 woodblock prints; although one wonders how the prints were sourced considering that Watanabe had lost all his inventory in the raging fires which followed the quake.
Although Ogura suggests details were arranged from Boston, upon the Yoshida’s arrival in San Francisco on December 18th the ship’s manifest identified New York as their intended destination. Before continuing on to the East Coast, Yoshida enlisted the support of J. Nilsen Laurvik (1877-1953) the Director of the San Francisco Palace of Fine Arts who wrote to fellow American museum directors endorsing the both the quality of the material and the worthiness of its altruistic purpose. Wasting no time to traverse the country, the first exhibition appears to have been in New York where a small line item in the New York Times on January 27, 1924 announced: “There is being held at the Art Center, from Jan. 23 to Feb. 2, an exhibition of paintings by Japanese artists to be sold for the benefit of artists who suffered in the earthquake.”
While in New York, Hiroshi and Fujio both executed paintings of the Woolworth Building, the 1913 neo-Gothic skyscraper located on Broadway opposite City Hall Park and at the time, the tallest building in the world. In order to depict the building from a high enough vantage to see the Hudson River in the distance, they may have gained access to an upper floor of the municipal building at 1 Centre Street, perhaps the public cafeteria on the 26th floor. Fujio’s watercolor painting in wintery hues of blue and grey is of very nearly the same view, her positioning appears to have been slightly to the right of Hiroshi, choosing to frame her composition closer to the tower, revealing more of the facade of the New York Post office with its faceted domed roof in the lower left. Hiroshi’s painting utilizes a warmer palette, with the dark brown cityscape in the foreground contrasting with the low-lying sun radiating in glowing shards against hues of pinks and purple. The impressionistic effect in the sky calls to mind Yoshida’s print, Sailing Boat: Morning, which he would produce in 1926 shortly after his return to Japan. Remarkably, this painting of the Woolworth Building, perhaps Yoshida’s only depiction of modern skyscrapers, has returned to New York nearly exactly 100 years later.
After New York, the next venue was in March at the St. Botolph’s Club in Boston, where it was noted in the March 23rd edition of the Boston Sunday Herald, swiftly followed by an opening on April 6th at the Arts Club in Washington, D.C., where it was announced in the Evening Star that Yoshida himself, noted as an accomplished artist as well as a scholar, would give a talk on “Modern Painting in Japan” on April 7th at 4:30. The Yoshidas were likely heartened that Boston-based artist Lilla Cabot Perry (1848-1933, related by marriage to Commodore Perry) was simultaneously showing a selection of paintings at the Arts Club and was the guest of honor the previous day. Perry had spent four years in Japan between 1897 and 1901 and many of her paintings from Japan are not unlike the watercolors produced by both Hiroshi and Fujio during the same period. Gertrude Richardson Bringham (1876-1971), an artist who worked as the Art Editor for The Washington Times writing under her pen name, Victor Flambeau (and in her own name for the Washington Post), penned a complimentary syndicated review of the Washington show in which she mentioned the exhibition’s success first in New York where it “aroused great enthusiasm,” followed by Boston “where its popularity paved the way for the sale of works in Washington.”
Other venues followed including the Seattle Fine Art Society (August), the Cleveland Museum of Art (September 15 – October 15), Milwaukee Art Institute (November 1 – 20), John Herron Institute of Art in Indianapolis (Nov 20 – December 15), and the Art Institute of Chicago (January 1925). Ogura suggest there were venues in Detroit and Philadelphia but both locations have not yet been documented. By the time the exhibition opened in The City Art Museum in Saint Louis (March 1925), the woodblock prints on offer had dwindled to just 24 works. Through the contacts made with this traveling show, Yoshida would arrange a second circuit exhibition of shin-hanga woodblock prints primarily made after the earthquake which opened at the Brooklyn Museum of Art on October 12, 1926. The print show traveled to five additional locations (Montclair Art Museum, Worcester Art Museum, Art Museum of Syracuse, Denver Art Museum, and Dayton Art Institute) and featured 68 works by a several artists, with 23 prints by Yoshida including 17 from his America and Europe series.
Yoshida eventually adapted this composition into a small format print (approx. 10 1/4 by 7 1/8 in.) published in 1928.
PROVENANCE:
Yoshida Family Collection
Paul Binnie (woodblock print artist, b. 1967)
REFERENCES: The New York Times, Art Exhibitions of the Week, January 27, 1924 (Art Center, Jan 23-Feb 2) Boston Sunday Herald, Past and Present in Boston Art Galleries, March 23, 1924 (St. Botolph’s Club)
Leila Mechlin, Notes of Art and Artists, The Sunday Star, Washington, D.C., March 30, 1924, and April 6, 1924
Viktor Flambeau, Fort Worth Record-Telegram, June 1, 1924 (on Washington Exhibition)
Ogura Tadao, Yoshida Hiroshi zenhangashu (The Complete Woodblock Prints of Hiroshi Yoshida), 1987, p. 187 (Chronological History) Fine Japanese Works of Art, Bonhams New York, 19 March 2008, lot 5037 (Fujio Yoshida New York watercolor)
Kendall H. Brown, Dynamic Actors and Expanding Networks: The Rise of Shin Hanga in America in the 1920s and 1930s, in, The Women of Shin Hanga: The Judith and Joseph Barker Collection of Japanese Prints, 2013, pp. 43-55 Yoshida Hiroshi: A Retrospective, Chiba City Museum of Art, 2016, p. 289 (appendix re: 1924 exhibition)
In addition to acquiring recent prints by Hodaka Yoshida (1926-1995) from the Yoshida Family Collection, we are happy to announce the eighth design from Paul Binnie’s ongoing Travels with the Master series which pays homage to the shin-hanga landscape artist and father of Hodaka, Hiroshi Yoshida (1876-1950).
Please find these new prints, as well as many others, available here on our website.
RECENTLY CLOSED EXHIBITION: ASIA WEEK NEW YORK 2024
COLLECTING THE MASTER: The Binnie Collection of Hiroshi Yoshida Paintings
March 14 – 22, 2024
Asia Week Hours: Mar 14-22, 11am-5pm (otherwise by appointment)
We are pleased to present our latest exhibit, COLLECTING THE MASTER: The Binnie Collection of Hiroshi Yoshida Paintings, assembled by the prominent contemporary woodblock printmaker, Paul Binnie for this 15th year of Asia Week New York.
Hiroshi Yoshida (1876-1950) was a Japanese artist, painter and printmaker, widely known throughout the world for his woodblock printed work. Part of the shin- hanga (lit. ‘new print) movement of the first half of the twentieth century, Yoshida’s prints were produced in the same way as earlier ukiyo-e (lit. ‘pictures of the floating world’); woodblocks would be carved by a specialist artisan following the design of an artist, and then printed in colors by a specialist printer, all under the direction of a publisher, who then undertook to sell the finished product. However, in Yoshida’s case, he eventually employed the carvers and printers directly, acting as his own publisher and even occasionally carving and printing himself.
Aside from this well-known print career, Yoshida had a very active life as a painter and exhibited in a range of Japanese government-sponsored exhibitions, private art society group shows, and commercial galleries. He also exhibited widely embarking on trips to the United States and Europe in his early twenties. Along with friend and fellow-painter, Nakagawa Hachiro (1877-1922), they arranged several exhibitions, primarily of their watercolors, at museums and galleries in the Midwest and New England to great acclaim. Yoshida would continue to make several trips to capture the natural landscapes throughout the United States and Europe.
A natural leader and innovator, Yoshida was arguably one of the most influential artists in his time and among later generations as well, as evidenced by this collection. The Scottish artist and printmaker Paul Binnie (b. 1967) began to build a collection of Yoshida woodblock prints and original paintings and drawings around 1989, when he purchased his first landscape print by the earlier master. In addition to the scrolls and fan paintings which feature subjects and motifs seen in Yoshida’s printed works, such as boats on the Inland Sea, and views of Mount Fuji, The Binnie Collection of Hiroshi Yoshida Paintings offers two drawings, four watercolors and eight oil paintings, including the original canvases for three of Yoshida’s woodblock prints, Breithorn, Ghats at Benares and New York.
Paul Binnie: 30 Prints for 30 Years of Printmaking
To celebrate the release of new prints by Paul Binnie, as well as his highly prolific and accomplished career, we have assembled this very special online exhibition celebrating his 30th year as a printmaker.
This online show not only features the recent print releases of Bubble Era of 1990 and Tears (red-bronze variant), but also some of the artist’s most rare and sought-after designs, including such rarities as his 1994 Nocturne and the 2005 Butterfly Bow, both of which have long proven (nearly) impossible to acquire by his most ardent collectors.
To view these works and others in the exhibition, click here.
NEW PRINTS RELEASED
Paul Binnie
We are pleased to announce the release of an exciting new print set by Paul Binnie, The Moon Moth Suite, comprising of a set of three woodblock printed illustrations, Moon Moth Mask, Scarlet Sabre Bills, and Sea Dragon Mask. The designs are featured in a 2023 re-release of the 1961 science fiction book, The Moon Moth, by Jack Vance (1916-2013).
Binnie was commissioned by the publisher Cordes Press in the United Kingdom to provide the prints for a new edition of the famous and influential novella. The Cordes edition features three black and white illustrations which are based on Binnie’s keyblock prints of the designs, and there is also a (sold-out) luxury edition limited to only fourteen copies of the book with hand-printed color woodblock prints. Inspired by this unique project, Binnie used the same blocks to produce this small edition limited to thirty impressions of the suite of three full-color prints utilizing slightly variant color schemes embellished with the addition of mica, embossing, gold metallic printing, and extra bokashi shadings.
To learn more about this exciting new release, click here.
IN THE GALLERY
KAZUMA/KOIZUMI: Chasing Modernity
This Fall, Scholten Japanese Art presents KAZUMA/KOIZUMI: Chasing Modernity, which juxtaposes the work of two modern printmakers, Oda Kazuma (1881-1956), and Kishio Koizumi (1893-1945), both prominent members of the sosaku hanga (creative print) movement who shared an interest in depicting daily life in views of modern Japan, particularly the restoration and transformation of Tokyo following the 1923 earthquake. Although both embraced the ‘artist as creator’ ethos associated with sosaku hanga, they utilized varying techniques; Oda Kazuma was the leading color lithographer in Japan who also produced self-carved as well professionally published woodblock prints; while Kishio Koizumi was a dedicated woodblock carver and printer.
The exhibition is displayed in two parts:
Part One: Oda Kazuma features various landscape and figural works produced using different techniques including lithographs, as well as self-carved and professionally published woodblock prints.
The full index can be viewed here.
Part Two: Kishio Koizumi features a complete set of the artist’s monumental series, One Hundred Pictures of Great Tokyo in the Showa Era (Showa dai Tokyo hyakuzue), produced between 1928 and 1940.
The full set can be viewed here and individual works from the set here.
MORE ONLINE EXHIBITIONS
Meiji Period (1868-1912)
An online presentation of Meiji Period (1868-1912) woodblock prints in celebration of the Japanese Art Society of America’s 50th anniversary exhibition, Meiji Modern: Fifty Years of New Japan, opening on October 3, 2023 at the Asia Society here in New York.
Our selection includes works by Kiyochika, Yoshitoshi, Ginko, Kunichika, Chikanobu, and Shuntei, among others, and concludes with a group of fifteen prints from the collaborative series promoting modern goods, Collections of Famous Products, The Pride of Tokyo, featuring complex mitate (parodies) enriched by layered meanings and cultural references which are revealed by unlocking the rebuses (picture puzzles) and wordplay.
View the exhibition here.
View the exhibition index here.
Backstage Pass: KABUKI (Part One and Two)
Featuring a selection of shin hanga prints and related ephemera, this online exhibit offers viewers both a front row seat to the drama…as well as a peek behind the curtain.
View Part One of the exhibition here.
View Part Two of the exhibition here.