<b>MORNING GLORIES</b> / Inuzuka Taisui1929$2,800</em>

Details

This is a unique 3-piece set by the shin hanga artist Inuzuka Tasui. The grouping is of the artist’s circa 1929 print titled Morning Glories, published by Kawaguchi. The set includes the original artist-produced watercolor; hanshita, or key block, and the fully realized, commercially produced woodblock print. This extraordinary collection is a rare opportunity to see the woodblock print process at work.

As with all prints produced in the shin hanga collaborative process, an artist was hired by the publisher to create a design that would be published as a woodblock print. The artist typically submitted a finished watercolor, as the work included in this set, to the publisher for approval. If the publisher accepted the design, he would have his skilled artisans carve out the woodblocks and print a trial impression to deliberate further on the design. Usually, adjustments were made before the finalized commercial impression was executed, as this set illustrates.

It is interesting to take note that the finalized woodblock print from this set is not an exact reproduction of the artist's original watercolor. The finalized print showcases the morning glories with three colors versus the original work’s two tones. The original watercolor has itself a very rarely seen correction, where the artist has pasted a modification to the leaves at the bottom right flower in the composition. The stripped-down background of the original’s work only hints at the texture and depth in the finalized print created by the barren effects and the woodblock printing block itself.

Connoisseur's Note

This exceedingly rare group comes from the Kawaguchi estate.