1870-1949
Five-Storied Pagoda at Nikko
(Nikko goju no to)
red artist's seal Koitsu, titled on the lower right margin, Nikko goju no to, followed by the publisher's seal Kawaguchi (Kawaguchi Bijutsusha), sealed on the lower left margin, hori Maeda (carver Maeda [Kentaro]), suri Komatsu (printer Komatsu [Wasankichi]), Hanken shoyu (copyright reserved), ca. early 1930s
oban tate-e 16 1/2 by 11 3/8 in., 42 by 28.9 cm
Born Tsuchiya Koichi in Hamamatsu, Shizuoka Prefecture, Koitsu moved to Tokyo where he had planned to apprentice himself to the woodblock print carver Matsuzaki, but instead became a live-in apprentice to the self-taught painter and printmaker, Kobayashi Kiyochika (1847-1915) in 1886. Kiyochika was a prolific artist, and his adaption of Western artistic techniques and his reinterpretation of ukiyo-e would greatly influence artists of the shin-hanga movement. Although Koitsu worked closely with his teacher, remaining in his household for 25 years, he waited until 17 years after Kiyochika's death before he began issuing landscape prints of his own. His foray into landscape print design was apparently prompted by meeting the leading shin-hanga publisher, Watanabe Shozaburo (1885-1962) in November 1931 a the massive memorial exhibition of Kiyochika's work, of which Watanabe was a major supporter, loaning over a third of the over 600 works on view. In 1932 Koitsu began producing the first of ten-landscape woodblock prints with published by Watanabe. Later he designed prints with other publishers including Doi Sadaichi, Baba Nobuhiko, and Takemura.
This print is one of only three oban-sized woodblock prints that Koitsu issued with the publisher Kawaguchi; all three created in collaboration with the talented team of carver Maeda Kentaro and printer by Komatsu Wasakichi. Printed without the aid of a keyblock, the expressive and experimental composition must have been a challenge to produce as it would have been very difficult to maintain the alignment of the color blocks while carving and printing. A scarce design, this impression is particularly subtle, unlike other extant examples, even the title and publishing details in the margin are printed in blue instead of black ink.
References:
Reigle Newland, Amy, gen. ed., Printed to Perfection: Twentieth-century Japanese Prints from the Robert O. Miller Collection, 2004, p. 38, no. 8
Ross Walker and Toshikazu Doi, The Catalogue Raisonne of Tsuchiya Koitsu, 2008, p. 264, fig. 8.5
Minneapolis Institute of Art (collections.artsmia.org), accession no. P.77.28.8
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (mfa.org), accession no. 50.2910
(inv. no. 10-5779)
price: Sold