Hall of the Great Buddha (Nara Daibutsuden)
by Kawase Hasui
by Kawase Hasui
Temple and shrine subjects form the backbone of Hasui's rural Japan repertoire — steady, consistently popular categories that hold value across all market conditions. Snow at temple subjects command the highest premiums (Snow at Tosho-gu Shrine in Ueno achieved $3,200 at Artelino; Saishoin Temple in the Snow reached $3,000). Standard pre-war temple scenes without snow trade between $1,000–$3,500. Postwar lifetime editions (1946–1957) bearing the small 6mm J-seal represent authentic lifetime impressions but from the artist's final decade.
Hall of the Great Buddha at Nara (Nara Daibutsuden), published in 1950, depicts the Todai-ji's Great Buddha Hall (Daibutsuden) — the largest wooden building in the world, housing the 15-meter bronze Buddha cast in the eighth century — in a postwar composition that reasserts the ancient monument's continued grandeur. The Great Buddha Hall, its massive gabled roof rising above Nara's deer park, was a subject demanding compositional care to convey the scale of the structure relative to its natural surroundings. The 1950 date, five years after the war's end, gives this depiction of Japan's most monumental ancient structure a particular cultural resonance.
伏見稲荷
Woodblock print
c. 1832/38
Color woodblock print; oban
Woodblock print
Uji Byodoin no ichibu
1921
Color woodblock print; oban
Curated cross-cuts that include this print.
Hall of the Great Buddha (Nara Daibutsuden) was created by Kawase Hasui (川瀬巴水) in 1950.
Hall of the Great Buddha (Nara Daibutsuden) was published by Watanabe Shozaburo (1950).
Hall of the Great Buddha (Nara Daibutsuden) depicts temples & shrines, religious, and architecture, set at Nara.
