Japanese Woodblock Prints 1680 – 1980

USD $39.95

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Specification

Hardback

ISBN: 978-1-913875-91-6

136 pages

254 × 210 mm (8 ¼ × 10 in)

100 colour illustrations

In association with Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, Massachusetts

April 2025

Description

A major new survey of an internationally significant collection of Japanese woodblock prints.

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This wide-ranging volume brings together over seventy five significant woodblock prints from the collection of Worcester Art Museum, spanning three hundred years, from the seventeenth century through the twentieth. Organized chronologically, it begins with rare, and in some cases unique, examples of Edo-period (1603–1868) woodblock ukiyo-e prints, many of which were sourced from the museum’s seminal John Chandler Bancroft collection, donated in 1901. Encompassing a diverse range of sizes, materials, and subjects, among the renowned artists represented are Katsushika Hokusai, Utagawa Kunisada, Utagawa Hiroshige.

This volume then surveys later periods and artists associated with Japanese print output during the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Meiji (1868–1912) and Taishō (1912–1926) periods including many produced by artists working as part of the Shin-hanga “new prints” and Sōsaku-hanga “creative print” movements. The works from this time period include designs by such influential artists as Tsukioka Yoshitoshi, Kamisaka Sekka, Hashiguchi Goyo, Yoshida Hiroshi, Kōshirō Onchi and Ito Shinsui.

Finally, later post-war prints featured in the catalogue, dated to the 1950’s onwards, manifest the influence of international art movements including Cubism, Surrealism and Popart.

Edited by Fiona Collins
Contributions by Fiona Collins, Quintana Heathman Scherer, and Sarah E. Thompson

Author biographies

Fiona Collins is curatorial researcher of Asian Art, Worcester Art Museum.

Sarah E. Thompson is curator of Japanese Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Quintana Heathman Scherer is assistant professor, Kanagawa University, Yokohama, Japan.

Table of Contents

    • Director’s Foreword by Matthias Waschek
    • Acknowledgments
    • Introduction by Fiona Collins
    • The Technology of Japanese Woodblock Prints by Sarah E. Thompson
    • Famous Places: Japanese Woodblock Prints at the Worcester Art Museum by Quintana Heathman Scherer
    • Catalogue
      Edo Period, 1601–1868
      Meiji and Taisho Periods, 1868–1926
      Shōwa Period, 1926–1989
    • Glossary of Terms
    • Index
    • Photo Credits