Yoshida Hiroshi: Chikugo River (Sold)

Artist: Yoshida Hiroshi (1876-1950)
Title: Evening on the Chikugo River
Date: 1927 (Shôwa 2)

Evening View on the Chikugo River in Hita. (Hita Chikugogawa no yoru.) Splendid evening scene along the Chikugawa river, which runs through Yoshida’s native Kurume in Fukuoka. Most interesting is the way the trees have been depicted--as if a soft wind were moving the the branches. They are depicted in a way that looks like brushstrokes, impressionistic in feeling. Kiyochika also used a similar technique a few decades earlier.  Bright, orange-yellow lights are reflected on the darkening river. This work has significantly deeper colors than the more common lighter blue version that seems to have been more widely available; see the Cleveland Art Museum for an example of the lighter version.  Provenance: Purchased directly from the Yoshida Family, this work has never been circulated. Extremely fresh and clean, and cannot be compared with examples that have been passed around for decades and/or framed.

Condition: Excellent impression, color and condition. Mint.
Dimensions: ôban (27.9 x 40 cm)
Publisher: Self-published by the artist.
Literature: Ogura, Yoshida Hiroshi zenhangashu (The Complete Woodblock Prints of Hiroshi Yoshida), 1987, p. 86, no. 86. Amy Reigle Stephens, ed., The New Wave: Twentieth-Century Prints from the Robert O. Muller Collection, 1993, p. 119, no. 106. Carolyn Putney, et al., Fresh Impressions: Early Modern Japanese Prints, Toledo Museum of Art, 2013, p. 286, cat. 292. See Minneapolis Institute of Art online and Cleveland Art Museum online.
Seal: Jizuri (“self-printed”) in ink
Signature: Yoshida in ink and Hiroshi Yoshida in pencil

SKU: YOCS055