Details

In Autumn in Mountain Cottage, Susumu Yamaguchi presents a quiet meditation on isolation and seasonality. A cluster of thatched-roof homes rests nestled in a valley of ochre and rust, the grasses dry and wind-brushed, clinging to the base of a rugged mountain slope. The hill itself dominates the composition, rendered with angular lines and rich textures that ripple across its flanks in waves of muted blue and earthen brown. In the distance, a strand of pines leans into the wind, anchoring the scene with a vertical rhythm. This is a landscape not only seen but deeply felt — a place shaped by time and weather, suffused with the melancholy hush of late autumn.

The print bears a close stylistic kinship to the early color works of Un’ichi Hiratsuka, with whom Yamaguchi studied. Like his teacher, Yamaguchi employed direct, tactile carving and a raw color palette to express a reverence for the rural landscape, stripped of artifice. His marks are expressive but economical — not decorative, but structural — capturing the spiritual weight of the mountains and the fragility of human life within them. The scene evokes not just a place, but a mood: of retreat, of stillness, of modest living in harmony with nature.

Connoisseur's Note

Susumu Yamaguchi was one of many postwar Japanese printmakers who trained under Un’ichi Hiratsuka, inheriting a commitment to the Sosaku Hanga ideal of self-directed, wholly hand-crafted printmaking. This print from the late 1940s reflects that lineage clearly: it retains Hiratsuka’s strong compositional logic and wood-grain expressiveness while softening the austerity with more atmospheric, painterly coloration.

Autumn in Mountain Cottage is a fine and increasingly uncommon example of this transitional moment in Japanese printmaking — when the bold graphic confidence of early Sosaku Hanga began to incorporate more lyrical, introspective modes. For collectors, it offers both historical resonance and aesthetic subtlety. In Yamaguchi’s hands, the mountain is not merely a background — it is a silent presence, guardian-like, watching over the modest dwellings below with quiet gravity.