Biography
Inuzuka Taisui (犬塚泰水) is recorded in Japanese print scholarship as an artist active around 1929, and almost nothing about his biography outside of that year has been securely established. Neither birth nor death dates have been confirmed, his training is undocumented, and even the reading of his given name — encountered in catalogues as both Taisui (泰水) and, in an alternate set of characters, Taisui (苔翠) — has not been definitively settled. He is one of a small group of artists whose surviving body of work consists almost entirely of a short publishing run in the late 1920s, after which the trail goes cold. The work that does survive is, however, of high technical quality and forms an unusually coherent group. Inuzuka produced a series of large-format botanical prints in a Western-influenced manner, designed at a scale considerably greater than typical late-Edo kachō-e and laid out with a botanical illustrator's eye for the structure of the plant rather than the decorative interlocking of stems and blossoms in the older Japanese tradition. Identified compositions include Peonies and Vase, Dahlias, Hydrangea with Butterfly, Morning Glories, Amaranthus tricolor (Joseph's Coat), and Coleus — all of them dated to 1929 in standing scholarship. The prints were issued by Kawaguchi and Sakai, the short-lived joint venture that the Tokyo publisher Kawaguchi Jirō formed with Sakai Shōkichi between 1929 and 1931. The same partnership produced shin-hanga prints by Kawase Hasui, Ohara Koson, and Torii Kotondo during its brief existence, and the Inuzuka botanicals appear to have been among its more ambitious projects in terms of block-count and color complexity. The Peonies design was famously issued in a first edition of three hundred impressions destined for export and an additional smaller domestic edition of one hundred, after which the blocks were destroyed — a kind of programmed scarcity associated with the higher tier of shin-hanga publishing. Surviving documentary material includes a complete production set for at least one design — original watercolor (hanshita), keyblock impression, color-trial proofs, and finished print — which has allowed scholars to reconstruct his working method as a designer who delivered a finished watercolor to the publisher's workshop rather than carving or printing the blocks himself. His signature on the finished prints is typically written 'Inuzuka' in script with a round seal beneath reading 'Taisui', 'Inu', or simply 'Inuzuka' in hiragana. Because Inuzuka does not appear in the standard biographical dictionaries of shin-hanga artists, and because no exhibition record, school affiliation, or publishing contract has been recovered, even careful contemporary specialists treat him as one of the field's documented enigmas. His prints are held in private collections almost exclusively, with a small number of impressions in institutional collections including the Honolulu Museum of Art and the holdings derived from the Robert O. Muller estate now divided between the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery and the Cleveland Museum of Art. The Inuzuka botanicals are valued today both as accomplished Western-style flower prints and as an unusually self-contained problem in shin-hanga research: a small, technically demanding body of work executed by an artist about whom virtually nothing else is known.
Key Facts
- Nationality
- 🇯🇵Japan
- Movement
- Shin-hanga
- Works Indexed
- 57
Frequently Asked Questions
Inuzuka Taisui (犬塚泰水) is recorded in Japanese print scholarship as an artist active around 1929, and almost nothing about his biography outside of that year has been securely established. Neither birth nor death dates have been confirmed, his training is undocumented, and even the reading of his given name — encountered in catalogues as both Taisui (泰水) and, in an alternate set of characters, Taisui (苔翠) — has not been definitively settled. He is one of a small group of artists whose surviving body of work consists almost entirely of a short publishing run in the late 1920s, after which the trail goes cold. The work that does survive is, however, of high technical quality and forms an unusually coherent group. Inuzuka produced a series of large-format botanical prints in a Western-influenced manner, designed at a scale considerably greater than typical late-Edo kachō-e and laid out with a botanical illustrator's eye for the structure of the plant rather than the decorative interlocking of stems and blossoms in the older Japanese tradition. Identified compositions include Peonies and Vase, Dahlias, Hydrangea with Butterfly, Morning Glories, Amaranthus tricolor (Joseph's Coat), and Coleus — all of them dated to 1929 in standing scholarship. The prints were issued by Kawaguchi and Sakai, the short-lived joint venture that the Tokyo publisher Kawaguchi Jirō formed with Sakai Shōkichi between 1929 and 1931. The same partnership produced shin-hanga prints by Kawase Hasui, Ohara Koson, and Torii Kotondo during its brief existence, and the Inuzuka botanicals appear to have been among its more ambitious projects in terms of block-count and color complexity. The Peonies design was famously issued in a first edition of three hundred impressions destined for export and an additional smaller domestic edition of one hundred, after which the blocks were destroyed — a kind of programmed scarcity associated with the higher tier of shin-hanga publishing. Surviving documentary material includes a complete production set for at least one design — original watercolor (hanshita), keyblock impression, color-trial proofs, and finished print — which has allowed scholars to reconstruct his working method as a designer who delivered a finished watercolor to the publisher's workshop rather than carving or printing the blocks himself. His signature on the finished prints is typically written 'Inuzuka' in script with a round seal beneath reading 'Taisui', 'Inu', or simply 'Inuzuka' in hiragana. Because Inuzuka does not appear in the standard biographical dictionaries of shin-hanga artists, and because no exhibition record, school affiliation, or publishing contract has been recovered, even careful contemporary specialists treat him as one of the field's documented enigmas. His prints are held in private collections almost exclusively, with a small number of impressions in institutional collections including the Honolulu Museum of Art and the holdings derived from the Robert O. Muller estate now divided between the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery and the Cleveland Museum of Art. The Inuzuka botanicals are valued today both as accomplished Western-style flower prints and as an unusually self-contained problem in shin-hanga research: a small, technically demanding body of work executed by an artist about whom virtually nothing else is known.
Inuzuka Taisui's work was shaped by the Shin-hanga tradition in Japanese woodblock printmaking. Shin-hanga: ## What is Shin-hanga? Shin-hanga (新版画), literally "new prints," is the early twentieth-century revival of the collaborative Japanese woodblock workshop, organized between roughly 1915 and 1960 by the Tokyo publisher Watanabe Shōzaburō (1885–1962) and a handful of competing houses.
Original prints by Inuzuka Taisui can be found in collections including Ohmi Gallery, Minneapolis Institute of Art, wbp, Japanese Art Open Database.
Inuzuka Taisui was active during the shin-hanga era and produced woodblock prints in the traditional Japanese aesthetic. Prints from this period benefit from strong collector interest. Prices range from $150 for more common subjects to $5,000 for rare designs in excellent condition. Most prints sell in the $480–$1600 range. Edition and condition are important price factors. The overall shin-hanga market has shown consistent strength.