Artist: Kawase Hasui
Medium: Original Japanese Woodblock Print
Series Title: Landscape
Edition: First State
Date: December, 1931
Publisher: Doi Sadaichi
Reference No.: Hotei #260
Size: 15 -1/2 x 10 -1/2 "
Condition: Mint
Notes:
RARE. First state impression, in near pristine overall condition. Provenance: Robert O. Muller Collection. Carver: Fujikawa; Printer: Goto; Publisher: Doi Sadaichi. True lifetime, first-edition impressions bear the explicit publishing details of Doi Sadaichi in the margin. They feature the artisanal mastery of the original carver Fujikawa Tsurujirō and printer Gotō Manjirō. Later posthumous restrikes of Doi-published prints typically carry different seals or stamps of Doi Eiichi (Sadaichi's successor).
Hasui utilizes an ethereal, masterfully graded palette of rich, velvety midnight blues and deep blacks, contrasted against a crisp white snowy floor that softly reflects the moonlight. In the far distance, tiny, warm orange or yellow windows glimmer through a soft winter mist—serving as the only delicate reminder of human life in an otherwise frozen, eerie, and silent landscape.
Unlike the vast majority of Hasui's prints published by Watanabe Shōzaburō, this design was uniquely commissioned and published by Doi Sadaichi (Doi Hangaten). For more than a decade, Doi Sadaichi (1876-1945) dealt in Japanese print reproductions in his shop, Doi Shoten, in San Francisco. He returned to Japan in 1916 but continued to make business trips to America. In 1924, he opened his own woodblock print shop in Tokyo, S. Doi Hangaten. Doi began selling shin hanga prints in 1931, initially with Hasui but later with other artists, most notably Tsuchiya Koitsu. Hasui may have agreed to collaborate with Doi, as he had done with Sakai-Kawaguchi, because of ongoing financial difficulties, perhaps caused by unforeseen expenses during the construction of his new home in Magome and the impact of the earlier 1927 Showa Financial Crisis. Doi would publish twelve of Hasui's prints between 1931 and 1932. Unique from Hasui's works with S. Watanabe, these images with Doi include the names of the block-cutters and printers.