Trois Coreens

Trois Coreens, or Three Koreans, is a figural color woodblock print by Yoshijiro Urushibara that stands somewhat apart from his more frequent European landscapes and flower studies. The French title reflects the international audience for which much of his London work was made: prints were exhibited and sold not only in Britain but across Continental Europe, and Urushibara often used French or English titles on his European editions. The composition portrays three Korean figures in traditional dress, a subject that Urushibara would have known from earlier Japanese pictorial sources as well as from the broader East Asian image culture that circulated in London during the years of his Frank Brangwyn collaboration. The print uses the layered transparent pigments, registered block-on-block construction, and reserved-paper highlights that are characteristic of his hand-printed editions, with attention to the patterns and weight of the robes that the woodblock medium handles especially well. As with most of his London output, each impression was pulled by Urushibara himself, placing the work firmly inside the London Japanese woodblock practice he helped to define rather than the publisher-run shin-hanga system in Tokyo. Documentation of this impression survives through ukiyo-e.org via the Robyn Buntin of Honolulu source listing, which has historically been an important channel for Urushibara's work outside the major museum collections. The print is a useful reminder that, alongside his Bruges canals and Brangwyn industrial scenes, Urushibara continued throughout his career to engage with East Asian subjects rendered for a European audience.