Japanese Woodblock Print “Willow and Stone Bridge” by Hiroshi Yoshida. Signed in plate Yoshida and Hiroshi red seal. Signed in pencil lower right Yoshida Hiroshi and titled “Willow and Stone Bridge” in pencil. Later edition with no Jizuri mark or self published. Frame measures 16 x 11 inches. Woodblock image measures 14 3/4 x 9 3/4 inches. Condition: Nicely framed in gold metal with glass. Wrinkles can be seen going diagonal in several places, crinkles to top middle left front. Nicely framed but does have wrinkles. Hiroshi Yoshida was born in 1876. He began his artistic training with his adoptive father in Kurume, Fukuoka prefecture. Around the age of twenty, he left Kurume to study with Soritsu Tamura in Kyoto, subsequently moving to Tokyo and the tutelage of Shotaro Koyama. In 1902, he played a leading role in the organization of the Meiji Fine Arts Society into the Pacific Painting Association. His work was featured in the exhibitions of the state-sponsored Bunten and Teiten. While highly successful as an oil painter and watercolor artist, Hiroshi Yoshida turned to woodblock printmaking upon learning of the Western world’s infatuation with ukiyo-e. Yoshida oversaw each step of the woodblock printing process-from design to publication. His career was temporarily interrupted by his sojourn as a war correspondent in Manchuria during the Pacific War. Although he designed his last woodblock print in 1946, Yoshida continued to paint with oils and watercolors up until his death in 1950. Hiroshi Yoshida was widely traveled and knowledgeable of Western aesthetics, yet maintained an allegiance to traditional Japanese techniques and traditions. Attracted by the calmer moments of nature, his woodblock prints breathe coolness, invite meditation, and set a soft, peaceful mood. All of his lifetime prints are signed “Hiroshi Yoshida” in pencil and marked with a jizuri (self-printed) seal outside of the margin. Within the image, most prints are signed “Yoshida” with brush and ink beside a red “Hiroshi” seal.
