Misty Day in Nikkō, Yoshida Hiroshi

Exhibition Label: "Tradition and Modernity: Japanese Art of the Early Twentieth Century," Jan-2005, Hillary Pedersen Yoshida Hiroshi was a print artist and avid traveler based out of Tokyo. He first painted landscapes in oil but later won critical acclaim for his works in watercolor. Around 1920 he ventured into woodblock printing and became one of the major revivers of the artform. He depicted both Japanese and foreign scenes, and was closely involved in all steps of printing, including the carving of the woodblocks. Hiroshi’s style is said to resemble that of an English nineteenth-century watercolorist illustrating Japanese themes. His skillful depiction of the hazy atmosphere appears in the mist-obscured trees rising beyond the pilgrims, who are dressed in traditional white costumes. These travelers rest in front of one of many shrines at the Nikko shrine complex, constructed in honor of the powerful Edo period (1600-1868) military ruler, Tokugawa Ieyasu (1543-1616). Archive Label date unknown: In 1937, Yoshida created six prints showing scenes of Nikkō, the location of several important religious and historic sites. In this small series, he experimented with extremely complex overprinting, in one case using 96 impressions to create a single image. Misty Day is from the series and depicts pilgrims stopping beside a mountain temple. True to the series, its effects of mist enveloping the trees are achieved by an elaborate number of finely tuned impressions.