<b>WISTERIA AT USHIJIMA</b> / Toshi Yoshidac. 1953<B>SOLD</B></em>

Details

Toshi Yoshida was the oldest son of Hiroshi and Fujio Yoshida. In early childhood, one of Yoshida’s legs was paralyzed. Unable to attend school, the young Yoshida enjoyed watching and sketching animals and being in his father’s print shop. As Yoshida grew older, he showed interest in making prints and started carving and printing in the family studio under his father’s tutelage. Yoshida carved and printed his father’s designs.

Yoshida’s first original designs date to the mid-1920s, and his career started in earnest in the late 1930s with a series of chuban-size landscapes that advanced his father’s style but demonstrated a sensitivity and flair for color that was all his own. In the 1950s, after his father’s death, the young Yoshida experimented with various styles and began working in abstraction, concurrently producing highly representational designs. Like his father, Toshi Yoshida traveled the world in search of inspiration and produced a large body of work featuring foreign subjects. Yoshida’s diverse abilities and spirit of experimentation set him apart from his father, advancing his own style and artistic perspective and bolstering the Yoshida family legacy.

This charming scene showcases a portion of the giant old wisteria tree in Ushijima in full bloom. Though the entire tree isn’t shown, Yoshida places careful attention on showing the gnarled branches, highlighting their dramatic sense of movement, which suitably anchors the spectacle of the hanging purple blooms at their peak. Set against a gold background, the composition recalls Rimpa school painting.

Connoisseur's Note

This work is a rare lifetime impression produced by the artist himself, not a later posthumous impression. Lifetime impressions bear a live pencil signature at the bottom right margin, in contrast to the later one with stamp signatures closely resembling pencilwork. Later impressions also showcase the name and information of the current publisher on the reverse, which this print lacks. This impression was never framed or displayed for extended periods, ensuring the colors are in a pristine state of preservation, appearing as vivid today as they were the day the work was produced.