Azalea Garden

The azalea — a flowering shrub that explodes into vivid pinks and reds each spring across Japanese gardens — is the protagonist of this 1935 print, which frames a garden landscape in the height of late-spring bloom. Yoshida brought the same analytical attention to floral subjects that he applied to mountain peaks, studying the massed color of azalea blossoms and the architecture of their cultivation in formal Japanese gardens. The composition may depict one of the famous azalea gardens around Tokyo — perhaps Nezu Shrine's azalea hill — where thousands of plants are terraced in seasonal spectacle. His oil-painter's eye for color relationships gives the floral masses a luminosity unusual in the woodblock medium.