Artist: Hiroshi Yoshida
Medium: Original Japanese Woodblock Print
Series Title: Japan
Edition: First and only
Date: 1926
Publisher: The Artist - Privately Published
Reference No.: Abe #76
Size: 23 -1/2 x 30 "
Condition: Very fine
Notes:
Signed in pencil; lower right margin. Sealed 'Hiroshi', and with artist’s jizuri (self-published) seal, titled in pencil, with carver's seal of Maeda Yujiro in the lower left, dated Taisho jugonen saku (made in 1926).
Two female figures stand pensively before two old cherry trees in the light of a full moon. The gnarled withering branches overhang in soft pink blossoms. Mount Yoshino is a popular location, renowned in classical poetry and verse for its famous cherry trees.
The figures in the foreground are known to be the daughters of Kawai Shinzo (1867-1936), a fellow artist and personal friend of Hiroshi Yoshida. The composition was based on an earlier watercolour, Kumoi Famous Cherry Blossom in Yoshino, 1899, which was exhibited at the Detroit Institute of Arts in the same year and purchased shortly after by the museum. For the design of the print, Yoshida relocated his figures to the foreground and reduced their number to two, clearing the foliage and grasses to allow a direct view of the two women enjoying the spring evening blossoms.
This large format work is of the largest type Yoshida employed in his printing output. Printing to this scale is fraught with difficulty; the perfect registration of the block onto the paper due to the difference in shrinkage between the two materials. In order to achieve Yoshida’s exacting standards, the large block surface was divided into three sections and two artisan printers were needed to work in conjunction to execute the three necessary printings. Perhaps due to the technical feat required in printing this work, only fifty impressions are recorded to have been printed.