The Property of a Lady
Yoshida Hiroshi (1876-1950) | Evening after Rain (Ugo no yube) | Taisho period, early 20th century
Lot Closed
December 19, 02:14 PM GMT
Estimate
4,000 - 6,000 GBP
Lot Details
Description
The Property of a Lady
Yoshida Hiroshi (1876-1950)
Evening after Rain (Ugo no yube)
Taisho period, early 20th century
woodblock print, from the series Seto Island Sea (Seto naikai shu), signed in Japanese in black ink Yoshida and sealed Hiroshi, and with artist’s jizuri [self-printed] seal, titled to the lower left margin as above, dated Taisho jugonen saku (made in 1926)
Horizontal oban: 27 x 41.5 cm., 10⅝ x 16⅜ in.
A sailboat drifts across the coastline of the Inland Sea, renowned for its myriad isles and tranquil waters. Through meticulous over-printing, Yoshida achieves a colouration more reminiscent of watercolour then traditional woodblock-printing. Here, all is awash in purple hues, suggesting the waning light of dusk after rainfall.
The series comprises four woodblock print designs, each evocatively depicting sailboats adrift the scattered islands of the Seto Naikai.
Yoshida returned to the Inland Sea on a two-month trip to sketch around the middle of March in 1930. He later made prints of the island landscapes there, from Kamishima, Manabeshima, Tomonoura, Abuto and Kinoe in Hiroshima Prefecture for his second series on the Inland Sea.1
For a similar impression of the same print in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, accession number 50.2944, go to:
https://collections.mfa.org/objects/255004
1. Ogura Tadao et al., The Complete Woodblock Prints of Yoshida Hiroshi, (Tokyo, 1987) p. 108, fig. 146.