Hiroshi Yoshida

Japanese artist (1876–1950)

the Japanese football manager and former player

Hiroshi Yoshida (吉田 博) was a 20th century Japanese painter and woodblock printmaker. He is regarded as one of the greatest artists of the shin hanga style, and is noted especially for his landscape prints. Yoshida traveled widely, and was particularly known for his images of non Japanese subjects done in traditional Japanese woodblock style, including the Taj Mahal, the Swiss Alps, the Grand Canyon, and other National Parks in the United States.

Hiroshi Yoshida (born Hiroshi Ueda) was born in the city of Kurume, Fukuoka, in Kyushu, on September 19, 1876. He showed an early aptitude for art fostered by his adoptive father, a teacher of painting in the public schools. At the age of 19, he was sent to Kyoto to study under Tamura Shoryu, a well known teacher of western style painting. He then studied under Koyama Shōtarō, in Tokyo, for another three years. He made numerous trips around the world, with the aim of getting to know different artistic expressions and making works of different landscapes. One of his most important trips was the one made to India. In 1899, Yoshida had his first American exhibition at Detroit Museum of Art (now Detroit Institute of Art). He then traveled to Boston, Washington, D. C., Providence and Europe. In 1920, Yoshida presented his first woodcut at the Watanabe Print Workshop, organized by Shōzaburō Watanabe (1885–1962), publisher and advocate of the shin hanga movement. However, Yoshida's collaboration with Watanabe was short partly due to Watanabe's shop burning down because of the Great Kanto earthquake on September 1, 1923. In 1925, he hired a group of professional carvers and printers, and established his own studio. Prints were made under his close supervision. Yoshida combined the ukiyo e collaborative system with the sōsaku hanga principle of "artist's prints", and formed a third school, separating himself from the shin hanga and sōsaku hanga movement. His art is used all around the world, wanting to inspire young artists to follow their hearts and to teach them that they should do what they'd like, even if nobody else in the room agrees. Hiroshi's art is used with clear credit to his name, and a small summary about his life. At the age of 73, Yoshida took his last sketching trip to Izu and Nagaoka and painted his last works The Sea of Western Izu and The Mountains of Izu. He became sick on the trip and returned to Tokyo where he died on April 5, 1950, at his home. His tomb is in the grounds of the Ryuun in, in Koishikawa, Tokyo.

Hiroshi Yoshida was trained in the Western oil painting tradition, which was adopted in Japan during the Meiji period. Yoshida often used the same blocks and varied the colour to suggest different moods. The best example of such is Sailing Boats in 1921. Yoshida's extensive travel and acquaintance with Americans influenced his art considerably. In 1931 a series of prints depicting scenes from India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Singapore was published. Six of these were views of the Taj Mahal in different moods and colors. The style that defines Hiroshi Yoshida's art work is known as ukiyo e. This style emerged in Japan around the 15th century, which consists of the application of paint on a block of wood. The usual theme represented in this painting were Kabuki theatre, natural landscapes, socialites, or everyday scenes. For many years the ukiyo e style was the truest representation of what art meant in Japan. His works are held in several museums worldwide, including the British Museum, the Toledo Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the Harvard Art Museums, the Saint Louis Art Museum, the Dallas Museum of Art, the University of Michigan Museum of Art, the Clark Art Institute, the Portland Art Museum, the Indianapolis Museum of Art, the Carnegie Museum of Art, the Tokyo Fuji Art Museum, the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Seattle Art Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, the Davis Museum at Wellesley College, and the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum.

The artistic lineage of the Yoshida family of eight artists: Kasaburo Yoshida (1861–1894), whose wife Rui Yoshida was an artist; their daughter Fujio Yoshida (1887–1987); Hiroshi Yoshida (1876–1950), their adopted son, who married Fujio; Tōshi Yoshida (1911–1995), Hiroshi's son, whose wife Kiso Yoshida (1919–2005) was an artist; Hodaka Yoshida (1926–1995), another of Hiroshi's sons, whose wife Chizuko Yoshida (1924–2017) and daughter Ayomi Yoshida (b. 1958) are artists. This group, four men and four women spanning four generations, provides a perspective on Japanese history and art development in the turbulent 20th century. Although they inherited the same tradition, the Yoshida family artists have worked in different styles with different sensibilities. Toshi Yoshida and the Yoshida family have used Hiroshi's original woodblocks to create later versions, including posthumous, of his prints. Prints created under Hiroshi Yoshida's management with special care have a jizuri (自摺) seal kanji stamp, which indicates that he played an active role in the printing process of the respective print. Hiroshi Yoshida's signatures vary depending on the agents and time of creation. Prints originally sold on the Japanese market do not carry a pencil signature or a title in English.

Japanese Woodblock Printing, comprehensive guide to the craft of woodblock printing written by Hiroshi Yoshida was published by The Sanseido Company, Ltd. in Tokyo and Osaka in 1939.