Auction Highlights 

Kawase Hasui (1883-1957) was a pillar of the shin hanga (‘new prints’) movement, designing over six hundred woodblock prints over a forty-year career. His output was largely devoted to the landscape genre and his evocative depictions of both urban and rural scenes imbued with a wide variety of moods struck a chord with the contemporary print enthusiast at the time, and continue to inspire collectors today.

Melting Snow: The Nostalgic Landscapes of Kawase Hasui

Expanding the Printer’s Art: Woodblock Prints by Yoshida Hiroshi

 A Selection of Landscapes from Across the Globe

Shin-hanga prints during the early twentieth century reveal a fascination with the traditional architecture of shrines and Buddhist temples. These bastions of Japanese spirituality and markers of the built environment were rendered in painstaking detail. In 1936, the author Akiyama Aisaburo penned a study of the architecture of Shinto shrines for English readers, titled Shinto and Its Architecture, which included twelve tipped-in colour woodblock prints by Kawase Hasui. This scenery of old times had significant domestic and international resonance, and would continue to be a major subject for artists in this mode up until mid-century.

 Shinto and Its Architecture

Modern Japanese woodblock prints have an indelible link to the seasons. The perfect expression of these transitory moments in nature were much sought after and employed to poignant effect.

 Picturing the Four Seasons

London

Consultant | Japanese Works of Art

Mark Hinton

Jon Adjetey

Cataloguer

Connie Chau

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Sotheby’s is pleased to present the second part of Landscape to City: 20th Century Japanese Prints. Featured are works by artists of the shin-hanga, or the Revival Print movement, spearheaded by the publisher Watanabe Shozaburo (1885-1962) who endeavoured to re-invigorated the medium of woodblock printing. Kawase Hasui’s Evening Snow at Sanjugen Canal and Nakayama-Shichiri Road in Hida Province exhibit some of the artist’s earliest collaborations with Watanabe. Large format works by Yoshida Hiroshi, such as his Rapids and Kumoi Cherry Tree, show some of developments and innovations of their medium keenly undertaken by shin-hanga artists of the early twentieth century. The sale also offers prints by Tsuchiya Koitsu, Ishiwata Koitsu and Ito Takashi, from landscape to cityscape with seasonal romantic designs of a past Japan.

Landscape to City: 20th Century Japanese Prints Part II