Shinkyo (Sacred Bridge) in Nikko, 1937
Yoshida Hiroshi (1876-1950) was born in the city of Kurume, in Kyushu, on September 19, 1876 as the son of an elementary school principal. At an early age, his artistic talent was discovered; at 18 he entered a private art school in Tokyo. He started as a painter and soon won many art exhibition prizes. In 1920 he began creating wood block prints. Yoshida, as a sosaku hanga follower, believed that the process of creating a print, including creating the design, carving the block and printing the image, should be performed by the artist himself.
Around this time Yoshida Hiroshi met Watanabe Shozaburo, publisher and owner of the Watanabe print store in Tokyo. Watanabe published the first seven of the wood block prints of Hiroshi Yoshida. In 1923 Watanabe's store was completely destroyed inthe fires that followed the Great Kanto Eathquake, all of Yoshida Hiroshi's wood blocks and more than a hundred of his prints were lost. In 1925, he hired a group of professional carvers and printers, and established his own studio. At this time he combined the ukiyo-e collaborative system with the sosaku hanga principle of “artist’s prints”, and formed the third school. Yoshida Hiroshi had created 259 wood blocks - seven published by Watanabe and the rest by Hiroshi himself.
Hiroshi Yoshida enjoyed traveling, and his destinations ranged from the United States, Europe, Africa, India, China, Korea and throughout Japan. He also loved mountaineering and established an association called Nihon Sangakuga Kyokai, the Japan Alpine Artist Association. His prints reflect these passions, most incorporating landscape scenes from his travels and mountain subjects from Japan and the European Alps. Yoshida even planned a series titled One Hundred Views of the World, but died before he could start.
Yoshida won international fame for being a Western-style painter and printmaker noted for the subtle colors and naturalistic atmosphere portrayed in his works. He won numerous prizes in Japan and in the world, gaining even stronger Western influences during his travels. Hiroshi Yoshida is considered one of the leading figures of the renewal of Japanese printmaking after the end of the Meiji period (1912). He left quite a legacy of artists with the family name of Yoshida. His wife Kiso Yoshida (1919-2005) was an artist, his son Hodaka Yoshida (1926-1995), whose wife Chizuko Yoshida (1924- ?) and daughter Ayomi Yoshida (1958- ) were also artists. They each however, worked in different styles and subjects.
Eboshi-ga-dake no Asahi (Sunrise on Mt. Eboshi), 1926
View of mountains at sunrise. Mountains seen from above the mist. Sky is light blue and yellow. The print is one of the set of twelve designs.
