The Old Fisherman, Japan (Le Vieux Pêcheur, Japon)

The Old Fisherman, Japan, known by its French title Le Vieux Pêcheur, Japon, is a Japanese woodblock print designed by Paul Jacoulet in 1936 and issued in the [shin-hanga](/glossary/shin-hanga) manner with the Tokyo carvers and printers that the artist used for his self-published editions. Although Jacoulet is most often remembered for his Korean, Chinese, and Micronesian portraits, his catalogue also includes a substantial group of Japanese subjects, among them street performers, theater figures, country women, and weathered seamen rendered with the same ethnographic care he applied abroad. The subject is an elderly Japanese fisherman, presented in the close half-length or three-quarter view that the artist favored for his portrait designs, with the lined face, sun-darkened skin, and characteristic seafaring garments that identify his trade. The composition leaves the background quiet so that the carver can register the texture of the figure's clothing and the printer can build warm tonalities through repeated impressions, often with the mica or metallic accents for which Jacoulet's editions were celebrated. Within his 1936 output, the print sits among Chinese, Korean, and Manchurian portraits made the same year, and forms part of the Japanese contingent that anchored the catalogue at home while his Asian travels generated the more exotic majority of subjects. No museum collection or institutional URL was supplied with the entry in the working brief, and the print is documented here from title, date, and its place within Jacoulet's known publication record as a self-published Japanese subject of the mid-1930s.