Jungfrau

Jungfrau is a 4,158-meter peak in the Bernese Alps of Switzerland, part of the trio of mountains—Eiger, Mönch, and Jungfrau—that dominate the Lauterbrunnen valley. Yoshida visited Europe in 1925 and produced a small group of prints from his sketches there, of which Jungfrau is among the more ambitious in scale. The composition likely contrasts the snow face of the mountain against darker rock buttresses and the alpine meadow or village foreground typical of vantages from Wengen or Mürren. Yoshida's mountaineering background—he was a serious alpinist who climbed in Japan's Northern Alps and the American Sierra—gave him an unusual ability to render glacial geometry and the layering of cloud against stone with topographic credibility. Bokashi gradations across the sky and snow allow the printer to suggest altitude and air without resorting to outline. Within shin-hanga, foreign mountain subjects of this kind are almost entirely Yoshida's domain.