Seitei Watanabe, Winter Landscape
Artist: Seitei Watanabe (1851–1918)
Title: Winter Landscape
Date: Early 20th Century
Size: 23.5 x 22.8 cm
Original Japanese woodblock print.
In this simple winter landscape, the water is still and the thick snow coats the entire view. Such quiet scenes are common subjects amongst shin-hanga artists. Place names held a particular importance for Japanese art and literature. Artists would call upon certain places for their poetic, historical or seasonal significance. Visiting somewhere lacking in either of these was somewhat contrary until after the Meiji Restoration in 1868, when artists begun to search out places outside the established poetic tradition.
Seitei Watanabe
Watanabe Seitei was born Yoshikawa Yoshimata, into a samurai family. At age 13, Watanabe began apprenticing in a pawnbrokers, spurred from the wealth his family has gained toward the end of the Edo period. However, three years later he changed to an artistic career where he studied with painter and lacquer artist Zeshin Shibata and then Kikuchi Yosai, with whom he had a lasting relationship. By 1875, Watanabe was producing crafts from export and in 1877 his product designs won the flower-crest award at the Domestic Industrial Exhibition.
The following year saw Watanabe travel to Europe at a time which was prohibitively difficult for the Japanese to do so. It is unclear how he achieved this, but there is some speculation that his work in the export industry gave him the contacts to do so. His talents continued to be formally recognised, winning a medal at the Paris Exhibition. He continued in Paris for three years, studying western painting and combining it with colours and washes learnt at the Kikuchi Yosai school. His paintings and woodblock prints are widely collected in the west and are popular among Japanese antique collectors.
Print Format | Shikishiban |
---|---|
Artist | Seitei Watanabe |
Subject | Landscapes |
Dimensions | 23.5 x 22.8 cm |
Condition Report | Paper residue, glue residue, slight creasing. |