HIROSHI YOSHIDA: SAILING BOATS, FORENOON

HIROSHI YOSHIDA: SAILING BOATS, FORENOON
By Hiroshi Yoshida (1876-1950), signed Yoshida with seal Hiroshi
Japan, dated 1926
Color woodblock print on paper. Vertical oban. Signed Yoshida with seal Hiroshi in the image, printed signature Hiroshi Yoshida at the margin. Printed title Hansen, gozen (Sailing Boats – Forenoon), from the series Seto Naikai shu (Inland Sea).
This work is part of Yoshida's 1926 Inland Sea series of nine prints. Six of the prints, including the present lot, show sailboats floating in Japan's Inland Sea, a body of water bounded by three of Japan's four main islands. Yoshida used the exact same woodblocks for each of these six prints but adjusted the colors to suggest different weather conditions and times of day. They are a testament to the expressive potential of color.
These prints represent Hiroshi's second series of woodblocks depicting sailboats on the Inland Sea. The ones for the original series, published in 1921, were destroyed during an earthquake that devastated eastern Japan in 1923. Yoshida designed a new set of woodblocks based on sketches he had made during a 1910 trip to the Inland Sea.
SIZE of the sheet 55 x 40 cm
Condition: Excellent condition with only minor wear.
Hiroshi Yoshida (1876-1950)
began his artistic training with his adoptive father in Kurume, Fukuoka prefecture. Around the age of twenty, he left Kurume to study with Soritsu Tamura in Kyoto, subsequently moving to Tokyo and the tutelage of Shotaro Koyama. Yoshida studied Western-style painting, winning many exhibition prizes, and making several trips to the United States, Europe and North Africa selling his watercolors and oil paintings. While highly successful as an oil painter and watercolor artist, Hiroshi Yoshida turned to woodblock printmaking upon learning of the Western world's infatuation with ukiyo-e. While widely traveled and knowledgeable of Western aesthetics, he maintained an allegiance to traditional Japanese techniques and traditions.
Museum comparison:
A closely related woodblock print is in the collection of the National Museum of Asian Art, Smithsonian Institution, accession number S2019.3.2026.
Auction comparison:
Compare a closely related woodblock print, sold at Sotheby's, Fine Japanese Prints, 16 December 2022, London, lot 153
(sold for GBP 11,970)
.