<b>ISLAND AT MATSUSHIMA</b> / Fritz Capelari1915<b>SOLD</b></em>

Details

The publisher Watanabe Shōzaburo started his enterprise reproducing well-known Ukiyo-e designs during the late Meiji period. Seeing an opportunity to produce original work and revitalize the art of woodblock prints, he first hired the Austrian artist Fritz Capelari. Producing more than a dozen designs for Watanabe, Capelari is credited with being the first Shin Hanga artist and thus creating a blueprint for combining Western aesthetic concerns with Japanese motifs that influenced both Watanabe and his future stable of artists.

The yellow billowing clouds at left animate the design as the wind carries sailboats forward, past the horizon. The soft and subtle printing of the sky allows us to see the barren effects in the background that add texture and interest to the surface and echo the wind gusts that carry the clouds and sailboats across the design. The composition is well balanced, as Capelari adds a pine tree at right that points toward the activity while a gentle tide rolls in, meeting the viewer at the lower bottom.

Connoisseur's Note

Island at Matsushima, 1915, is an exceedingly rare work. The great Kanto earthquake of 1923 destroyed the original Watanabe print shop and studio, including the printing blocks and unsold inventory for this design. Only impressions of this design sold before the earthquake and removed from Tokyo survived the earthquake and ensuing fires that consumed the city.