KAWASE HASUI (1883–1957) HATAORI, SHIOBARA, TAISHO PERIOD (20TH CENTURY)

Hasui turned to his earlier sketches of the Shiobara region to create his first woodblock print designs. Initially training as a painter, Hasui was inspired to take up the medium after witnessing Ito Shinsui’s novel treatment of the landscape genre in his 1918 series Eight Views of Omi (Omi hakkei) at an exhibition of the Home Town Association (Kyodokai), a society of artists working in the nihonga style. Hasui approached Shinsui’s publisher, Watanabe Shozaburo, and was well received. Readily accepting the artist’s talents, Watanabe encouraged Hasui to take a similarly radical approach to the woodcut. Collaborating together with his new publisher, the woodblock carver Chikamatsu, and the printer Ono, Hasui created his first three prints based on his previous studies of Shiobara. Retaining a painterly quality, the often analogous clear and exact line of earlier woodblock prints is notably softened, with the form of the rice paddies, farmhouse and distant mountains appearing almost distorted by the heavy rainfall in the valley.

For another impression of the same print in the collection of The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, accession no. 49.711, go to: https://collections.mfa.org/objects/253579