<b>PINE TREES BY THE MOAT</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.

This soft and gentle scene depicts pine trees as they stretch out toward the moat surrounding Tokyo’s imperial grounds. The pines are rendered in green oval forms that gracefully lean over the stone walls that seem too long for the still water. The design is subdued with soft green and bluish tones. The sky is rendered in a light pale blue with white oval patterns passing overhead as clouds, echoing the pines forms below. This quiet, contemplative scene most likely depicts Tokyo in summer. In this stillness, one can almost feel the city’s hot and humid air rise and quickly reveal why the pines so longingly lean toward the cool water below.

Connoisseur's Note

Pine Trees by the Moat, 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.