Landscape to City: A Collection of 20th Century Japanese Prints
Landscape to City: A Collection of 20th Century Japanese Prints
Takahashi Shotei (Hiroaki, 1871-1945) | Clam Fishing at Kawasaki (Kawasaki asari-gari) | Taisho period, early 20th century
Lot Closed
November 18, 02:01 PM GMT
Estimate
2,000 - 3,000 GBP
Lot Details
Description
Takahashi Shotei (Hiroaki, 1871-1945)
Clam Fishing at Kawasaki (Kawasaki asari-gari)
Taisho period, early 20th century
woodblock print, sealed Shotei, two square black seals at lower left, titled to the lower right as above, no publisher's mark but published by Watanabe Shozaburo, circa 1920
Just off the port of Kawasaki, an oarsman steers his boat towards the shore with a seated woman sorting through clams in woven bamboo baskets. A dozen ship sails populate the sea and a silhouette of Mount Fuji is visible in the distance.
Horizontal mitsugiriban: 17 x 38 cm., 6¾ x 15 in.
Shotei was born in Asakusa, Tokyo. He was apprenticed to his uncle, the Japanese style painter Matsumoto Fuko (1840-1923), at the age of nine. From around the age of sixteen, Takahashi was employed in the Imperial Household Department of Foreign Affairs where he copied the designs of foreign medals, court clothes and other objects pertaining to palatial ceremony. He also worked for magazines and scientific articles using the name Takahashi Shotei.
He began making woodblock prints for the publisher Watanabe Shozaburo (1885-1962) in 1907 where he was commissioned by the publisher in early spring. These early works were often modest in size and designed for long narrow formats. They were replete with scenes often seen in earlier ukiyo-e [lit. pictures of the floating world] prints, but embellished with a new realism. These romantic vistas of Japan reflect Watanabe’s first attempt to create a new type of woodblock print which aimed both to revitalise the tradition whilst also exporting to the West a romantic vision of Japan.
Shotei made more than five hundred designs for Watanabe before the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923, where the blocks for all of his designs were destroyed in the fire which soon ravaged through Tokyo following the quake. After the calamnity, Shotei designed a further one hundred and fifty more prints for his publisher.1
1. Helen Merritt, Modern Japanese Woodblock Prints: The Early Years, (Honolulu, 1990), pg. 43-44.