Yoshitoshi, Fan Tokaido - Hiratsuka

Taiso Yoshitoshi (1839 - 1892) Fan Tokaido (Suehiro goju tsugi): Hiratsuka, 1865. Oban.

A little known series (and rare), this collaborative Tokaido is little commented upon and only written up in Keyes, Courage and Silence: A Study of the Life and Color Woodblock Prints of Tsukioka Yoshitoshi 1839-1892, Cinncinnati, 1982. A strange adjunct to the Processional Tokaido of two years earlier, this series celebrates the same passage of the Shogun to the Imperial Capital in Kyoto in 1863. Like that series, the prints are crowded with figures in snaking lines through the mountain passes and across the shorelines of the Tokaido. As far as is known, Yoshitoshi produced 15 prints for the series, alongside prints by Hiroshige II among others. This print shows a view of Mount Koma with Fuji beyond, seen from Sagami Bay.

Prints from this set are rare, and are from very early in Yoshitoshi’s career - he was 26 at the time. The form of the print, the image of the unusual and exaggerated hill and the colour, all betray a debt to Hiroshige (especially the Upright Tokaido), and there is much in here of the ‘snapshot’ approach to composition - the snaking line of foot soldiers truncated on the left hand side. Some of Yoshitoshi’s prints in this series were designed to stand next to each other (although not as diptychs as such), suggesting that the set was intended to be seen in album format.

A fine, early Yoshitoshi. Full size, margined and in fine condition. Colour and impression are all fine.

Signed Yoshitoshi hitsu, Published by Fujikei.

36cm x 25cm.

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£410.00