Grapes and Apples (Budo to ringo)

In this 1940 still life — a departure from Yoshida's characteristic landscapes — clusters of grapes and a grouping of apples share the frame in a composition that draws directly from the Western still-life tradition he absorbed during his oil-painting years. Yoshida was among the very few shin-hanga artists to attempt the domestic still life with fruit, a genre with no precedent in classical Japanese printmaking but a rich tradition in European painting. The tactile quality of grape skins and apple flesh — their surfaces gathering and reflecting light differently — presented a technical challenge that his jizuri printing process, with its multiple passes of subtly modulated pigment, was well equipped to address. The work is an unusual and revealing excursion into Western genre territory.