Mattia Jona, Master Drawings and Prints, Japanese Prints - Piazzetta Guastalla 5, 20122 Milan, Italy, tel (+39) 02 8053315

TSUKIOKA YOSHITOSHI (1839 - 1892) THE PENANCE OF THE PRIEST MONGAKU
Woodcuts, vertical 'Oban' diptych, 1885. Signed 'oju Yoshitoshi ga', sealed 'Taiso'. Fine impression of the first state, with the title printed at the bottom. This state was published by Matsui Eikichi, a pupil of Yoshitoshi. See R. Schaap and J. Stevenson, 'Beauty and Violence, Japanese prints by Yoshitoshi', exhibition catalogue, The Netherland, 1992; cat. no. 47. Fine colours; the sheets slightly trimmed, minor flaws, generally in very good condition. Each sheet c. 352 x 234 mm. In this diptych we see Mongaku, penitent under an icy-cold waterfall, being saved by the god Fudo, while the Bodhisattva Kannon is looking down upon him.

Yoshitoshi was one of the last great masters of the Japanese woodblock print. Born in the last years of the Tokogawa Shogunate, he lived most of his adult life in the Meiji era of modernisation. At the age of eleven, he was enrolled as a student of the school of Kuniyoshi. His early work is full of extremely graphic violence and death, mirroring the lawlessness and violence of the Japan around him, which was simultaneously going through the breakdown of the feudal system imposed by the Tokugawa shoguns, as well as the impact of the West. By 1871, Yoshitoshi became severely depressed. Unable to work, he hardly produced any prints for two years. In 1873 he recovered from his depressions and changed his name to Taiso, which means 'great resurrection'. In 1882 he was employed by a newspaper. This gave him a steady income and marked the end of years of poverty. His last years were among his most productive, not only in terms of quantity, but also in terms of artistic quality. In 1885 the first designs of 'One Hundred Aspects of the Moon' were published. This series was extremely popular. In 1888 the series '32 Aspects of Customs and Manners' was published, a series of women prints. In 1889 a new series with ghost subjects came on the market: 'New Form of 36 Ghosts'. The symptoms of mental illness became more and more frequent. Nevertheless Yoshitoshi Tsukioka continued to work. He died in 1892 from a cerebral hemorrhage.