Seta Bridge

Date:: 1933
Medium:: Color woodblock print
Format:: Oban
Dimensions:: 39.5 × 26.9 cm
Publisher:: Yoshida Studio
Source:: Art Institute of Chicago

Typical Price

The edition type is the primary value driver for Yoshida prints. The jizuri seal — indicating the artist personally supervised every aspect of printing — typically commands 2–3× the price of posthumous reprints. Standard jizuri prints of Japanese landscapes cluster around $2,149 at dealer level (1stDibs benchmark). PBS Antiques Roadshow valued a pair of lifetime prints at $2,500 total (~$1,250 each) for non-jizuri examples.

Jizuri (artist-supervised) seal: $1,500–$4,000
Studio edition (no jizuri): $700–$2,000
Posthumous/family workshop reprint: $300–$800

Description

The Seta Bridge — the ancient crossing over the Seta River at its outlet from Lake Biwa in Shiga Prefecture, one of Japan's most historically significant bridges, the scene of multiple battles over the centuries — appears in this 1933 print as a structure that embeds human engineering within a landscape of water and sky. Yoshida's treatment of the bridge likely incorporates the long horizontal span of the Karahashi, or Chinese-style bridge, which crossed the Seta with a distinctive arched form over stone piers. The surrounding landscape — the broad outflow of Japan's largest lake, the Higashiyama mountains visible beyond — gave him the kind of expansive water-and-sky composition that his horizontal compositions handled with particular grace.