in fact, the connection is natural and historical. Vincent van Gogh was enchanted by Japanese woodcuts - their influence on his painting is well-documented - and accumulated a great many of them.
As a result, the Van Gogh Museum owns an extensive collection of Japanese prints, and regularly organizes exhibitions that explore links between Japanese and European art.
Dutch interest in Japanese culture predates van Gogh, however, and Dutch
collectors are well-represented in the Yoshitoshi show. A major manifestation of their enthusiasm is the Society for Japanese Art, which helped to select the exhibition and write its catalogue.
Born in Edo (now Tokyo) in 1839, Yoshitoshi began his art training, when he was about 11, in the studio of Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1798-1861). He published his first print, a 12th-century battle scene, when he was 14, and remained active as an artist until his death at 53 from a cerebral hemorrhage.
Like earlier ukiyo-e artists, Yoshitoshi was the first link in a collaborative chain of specialists who created prints for a commercial market. He produced an original drawing and decided how it was to be colored. A skilled carver then transformed the drawing into a series of woodblocks, one for each color. Using these blocks, a printer produced the actual print, in multiple impressions.
The artist's drawing was normally destroyed in the carving process; this exhibition includes some that apparently weren't carved, and so survived, as well as a few preliminary sketches. From these we can measure the artist's skill in drawing and composing.
Yoshitoshi updated ukiyo-e tradition by introducing a kind of reportorial realism, which often involved action based on real events. After visiting the battlefield where the shogun's army was defeated in 1868, he produced a series of warrior portraits. For the series "Postal News," he produced a three- sheet print of a great fire that burned in Tokyo on Nov. 29, 1876.
And for the series "Chronicle of the Imperial Restoration," he created a print that shows Japanese officials rowing out to one of Commodore Perry's black warships.
This print in particular also demonstrates how Western aesthetic notions had begun to infiltrate Japanese art, for the spatial recession to a distant horizon is pronounced. Drawing in Yoshitoshi's prints also carries more compositional weight than it does in earlier ukiyo-e work, and his figures sometimes show the influence of Western-style modeling.
One obvious difference between Yoshitoshi and earlier masters involves color, which is far more saturated and vibrant in his prints. This isn't always a good thing, though. The reds, sharp enough to be considered gaudy, sometimes throw the color relationships out of balance and detract from one's appreciation of the whole image.
The persistence of violence as a theme throughout Yoshitoshi's career, which many historians read
As a result, the Van Gogh Museum owns an extensive collection of Japanese prints, and regularly organizes exhibitions that explore links between Japanese and European art.
Dutch interest in Japanese culture predates van Gogh, however, and Dutch
collectors are well-represented in the Yoshitoshi show. A major manifestation of their enthusiasm is the Society for Japanese Art, which helped to select the exhibition and write its catalogue.
Born in Edo (now Tokyo) in 1839, Yoshitoshi began his art training, when he was about 11, in the studio of Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1798-1861). He published his first print, a 12th-century battle scene, when he was 14, and remained active as an artist until his death at 53 from a cerebral hemorrhage.
Like earlier ukiyo-e artists, Yoshitoshi was the first link in a collaborative chain of specialists who created prints for a commercial market. He produced an original drawing and decided how it was to be colored. A skilled carver then transformed the drawing into a series of woodblocks, one for each color. Using these blocks, a printer produced the actual print, in multiple impressions.
The artist's drawing was normally destroyed in the carving process; this exhibition includes some that apparently weren't carved, and so survived, as well as a few preliminary sketches. From these we can measure the artist's skill in drawing and composing.
Yoshitoshi updated ukiyo-e tradition by introducing a kind of reportorial realism, which often involved action based on real events. After visiting the battlefield where the shogun's army was defeated in 1868, he produced a series of warrior portraits. For the series "Postal News," he produced a three- sheet print of a great fire that burned in Tokyo on Nov. 29, 1876.
And for the series "Chronicle of the Imperial Restoration," he created a print that shows Japanese officials rowing out to one of Commodore Perry's black warships.
This print in particular also demonstrates how Western aesthetic notions had begun to infiltrate Japanese art, for the spatial recession to a distant horizon is pronounced. Drawing in Yoshitoshi's prints also carries more compositional weight than it does in earlier ukiyo-e work, and his figures sometimes show the influence of Western-style modeling.
One obvious difference between Yoshitoshi and earlier masters involves color, which is far more saturated and vibrant in his prints. This isn't always a good thing, though. The reds, sharp enough to be considered gaudy, sometimes throw the color relationships out of balance and detract from one's appreciation of the whole image.
The persistence of violence as a theme throughout Yoshitoshi's career, which many historians read