Hasui 巴水: Sakurashima, Kagoshima 鹿児島桜しま (Reserved)

Artist: Kawase Hasui 川瀬巴水 (1883-1957)

Title: Sakurashima, Kagoshima 鹿児島桜しま

Series: Selection of Scenes of Japan 日本風景選集  Date: 1922 大正十一年

A line of distant sailboats have their sails reflected in the water against the many-hued blues of the sea. The volcanic island of Sakurajima rises above the blue, its peak bathed in the red of the setting sun, its slopes a verdant green. beneath grassy slopes and red-hued peaks that glow with the red of sunset. Clouds tinged with pink and blue rise up in cottony puffs on either side. A pre-earthquake design from the series “Selection of Scenes of Japan”. Numbered verso with edition number 41/300. Narazaki wrote “Sakurajima, its mountains aglow in the morning or perhaps evening sun, is enhanced by the blue of the sea and the sky. The technique for illustrating the mountain crevices--which Hasui used around the time of his Shiobara work--once again finds expression in this print.”  Sakurajima (titled Sakurashima) is located in Kagoshima, and in 1914 a volcanic eruption fused the island with e Osumi peninsula. The peak of Minamidake is still and active volcano, and it is part of the Kirishima-Yaku National Park.  The colors of this example are much stronger and more vivid than the colors shown in the Brown/Hotei catalogue raisonné.

Condition: Excellent impression, color and condition.
Dimensions: aiban (23.3 x 31.1 cm) Publisher: Watanabe  Shôzaburô
Seal: Kawase  Signature: Hasui

Literature: Narazaki #82 Hotei #82. Kendall Brown, Water and Shadow: Kawase Hasui and Japanese Landscape Prints, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, 2014, p. 138, cat. IV.81. See Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Art Institute of Chicago collections. 

SKU: HAS619