Midnight
- Date:
- Shōwa period, dated 1959
- Medium:
- Woodblock print; ink and color on paper
- Dimensions:
- 38.8 × 63.5 cm
- Edition:
- Self-printed
- Source:
- Harvard Art Museums
$500–$8,000. Snow and night scenes tend to command premium prices for this artist. Key value factors: Hagiwara's abstract works are collected by both Japanese print and modern art collectors.
Midnight (1959) belongs to Hagiwara's early abstract period, when his international prize-winning career was just beginning to take shape through exhibitions at the Lugano, Ljubljana, and São Paulo print biennales. The midnight subject gave him a field of near-total darkness within which his carved surfaces could create the subtle differentiations between grades of darkness that made his black-on-black compositions so technically demanding. The 1959 date situates this among the works that established his reputation and defines the beginning of his mature abstract style.
Woodblock print
Teradomari no yau
1921
Color woodblock print; oban
![Mount Fuji on a Moonlit Night, Kawai Bridge (Tsukiyo no Fuji [Kawaibashi]), from the series "Selection of Views of the Tokaido (Tokaido fukei senshu)" by Kawase Hasui](https://www.artic.edu/iiif/2/d0960668-1e73-339a-b182-fb995a54bff0/full/843,/0/default.jpg)
1947
Color woodblock print; oban
March 1933
Color woodblock print; oban
Curated cross-cuts that include this print.
Midnight was created by Hideo Hagiwara (萩原英雄) in Shōwa period, dated 1959.
Midnight depicts night scenes and abstract.
Midnight measures 38.8 × 63.5 cm.
