A beautiful view of Mt. Fuji from Mizukubo at sunrise, the soft pink glow flooding the horizon beneath a lavender sky. The farmhouses in the foreground are still in dark shadow, yet intricately detailed in varying dark shades. The snow capped peak of Mt. Fuji rises at upper left, softly glowing white in the early morning, the base wreathed in clouds. A faint warm glow comes from the windows of few houses, providing a sense of human scale to the landscape. A truly dramatic perspective that adds to the powerful beauty of this sacred mountain, this is one of Shotei’s most popular designs.
The Woodblock Print
This oban-sized woodblock is in very fine condition. Beautiful bokashi shading with exceptional color tone and highlights to the sky and Mt Fuji edge, as well as the subtle tonal changes in the darkened village. 6mm edition stamp in the lower corner. Full and intact margins, Mild toning lines to the margins. A clean verso.
About the Artist
Hiroaki Takahashi Shotei (高橋松亭), born Matsumoto Katsutaro, was born in Tokyo on January 2, 1871 and was adopted as a young child into the Takahashi family and renamed Takahashi Katsutaro. At the age of 9 he was apprenticed to his uncle, Matsumoto Fuko and began studying painting, and whom according to tradition, gave him his art name “Shotei” a variant of his own surname “Matsumoto”. Shotei was in his mid-teens when he began to work in the design department of the Imperial Household Agency. In 1907, he was recruited as the first artist for Watanabe Shozaburo. Hiroaki used a variety of signatures. Many of his large landscape and bijin-ga are signed “Hiroaki,” while “Shotei” appears on other works. Hiroaki was a productive artist, completing around five hundred designs by the time he was fifty. Unfortunately, much of his work was destroyed by the fire that raged in the aftermath of the Great Kanto earthquake in 1923. Despite this tragedy, Hiroaki continued to work as a printmaker until his death in 1945.
After the earthquake Shotei created another 250 prints mostly depicting scenic Japanese landscapes in the shin hanga style he had helped to define. He continued to work for Watanabe, but also worked with the publishers Fusui Gabo and Shobido Tanaka, where he had more control over the finished print than was possible with Watanabe. Shotei used a variety of names, signatures and seals during his lifetime. From 1907 until 1922 he used the name Shotei, and after 1922 Hiroaki and Komei.
