#landscape print

Kawase Hasui (川瀬 巴水, 1883–1957)

Lost in the quiet power of the Látrabjarg Cliffs—where the edge of Iceland meets the end of the world.

There's a tiny label in the upper right corner of this print that tells a second story. It says "Au Printemps" - a Parisian department store - and a price: 0 fr. 95. Less than one franc. That's what Hiroshige's vision cost a Parisian shopper in the late nineteenth century. Ando Hiroshige's "8 Views of the Kanazawa Temple" - from his Hundred Famous Views of the Provinces series - traveled from an Edo workshop to a department store shelf in Paris, priced somewhere between a bar of soap and a ribbon. Japonisme wasn't just an aesthetic movement; it was a retail event. Prints like these arrived in France by the thousands, sometimes as coveted collectibles, sometimes wrapped around exported ceramics as packing material. That zigzag staircase cutting diagonally up a sheer cliff, tiny figures visible near the base, deep Prussian blue bleeding into blue-green pines. The architecture glows pale against dark rock. Hiroshige died in 1858; decades later, his prints were still sold in Paris for pocket change. The sticker outlasted him. The department store closed. The temple endures. Quelle: meisterdrucke.com

Artist: William Guy Wall (1792-1864) Printmaker: John Hill (1770-1850) Publisher: Henry J. Megarey (active: 1818-1845)

Hiroshige never visited Kyoto, yet "Red Maple Leaves at Tsuten Bridge" feels completely inhabited - autumn leaves burning above the gorge while visitors gather quietly beside the stream below. And then there’s that lone figure on the bridge: separated from everyone else, watching the same scene alone. Once you notice them, the entire print changes. Quelle: meisterdrucke.com

Catalogue reference: No. 243 in The Complete Woodblock Prints of Yoshida Hiroshi (Ogura, Abe Shuppan, Tokyo, 1987)

(via ebay - american_design_ltd)

Reduction woodcut, 2002