Yoshida Hiroshi

Painter-printmaker Yoshida Hiroshi, one of the leading figures of Japanese printmaking after the end of the Meiji period (1912), was born on 19 September 1876 in Kurume in Fukuoka prefecture.

His artistic talent was discovered early, and he went to Kyoto to study painting, eventually moving to Tokyo to study under Shotaro Koyama. He studied Western-style painting and embarked on travels abroad, achieving great success selling his watercolours and oil paintings in the United States, Europe and North Africa.

It was not before 1920 that Yoshida began creating woodblock prints, apparently inspired by the West’s fascination with ukiyo-e or Japanese woodblock prints. He was supported by Watanabe Shozaburo, publisher and owner of the Watanabe print store in Tokyo, who published the first seven of Yoshida’s woodblock prints. In 1923, Watanabe’s store was gutted by the fires resulting from the Great Kanto earthquake, destroying Yoshida’s wood blocks and more than a hundred prints.

Yoshida belonged to the Shin-Hanga (‘New Print’) movement of printmaking, that integrated Western elements without giving up the values of traditional Japanese woodblock prints, taking ukiyo-e to new heights. Artists were able to lend the effects of light and individual moods with the new syncretic movement. Yoshida’s prints reflected his love for travel and mountains. He spent four months from November 1930 travelling in India and Southeast Asia. Over the next two years, he produced a series of thirty-two woodblock prints of scenes from this trip. He was particularly fascinated with the quality of light he found in India and often depicted the same subjects at different times of day or night.