Key value factors: Edition order (first Watanabe/Doi printing vs. posthumous reprints) is crucial. Snow scenes, night views, and bijin-ga typically command premiums. Publisher seals and artist signatures authenticate first editions.
Asada Benji's interpretation of a French painting subject — likely a picnic scene drawn from the Impressionist tradition of the déjeuner sur l'herbe — reveals his engagement with Western artistic sources alongside his [shin-hanga](/glossary/shin-hanga) landscape practice. Osaka in the early Showa period was a cosmopolitan city with strong cultural exchange with the West, and print artists working there had access to Western art through reproductions and exhibitions. His woodblock translation of a French picnic would have navigated the productive tension between two very different pictorial traditions.
Wakasa Kugushiko
1920
Color woodblock print; oban
Woodblock print
1934
Color woodblock print; oban
n.d.
Woodblock print; ishizuri-e, section of harimaze sheet
Curated cross-cuts that include this print.
Picnic (After a French painting) was created by Asada Benji (浅田弁治).
Picnic (After a French painting) depicts landscapes, figures, and daily life.
