Prints of the Shinjuku Imperial Garden (Shinjuku Gyoen hanga)
Shinjuku Gyoen hanga
About This Series
Shinjuku Gyoen Hanga, the Prints of the Shinjuku Imperial Garden, is a set in which Hiratsuka Un'ichi (1895-1997) recorded the formal landscape, glasshouses, and seasonal vegetation of the imperial garden in the western part of Tokyo, a topographically constrained project undertaken in his characteristic sosaku-hanga manner in the late 1930s or wartime period when he was at the height of his teaching and printmaking career. The Shinjuku Gyoen, established in the Meiji period on the former Naito daimyo estate and combining French, English, and Japanese garden styles, offered Hiratsuka a contained yet varied subject in which architectural set pieces such as the Taiwan Pavilion and the great glasshouse could be set against pine plantings, formal lawns, and the seasonal trees for which the garden was already famous. Each sheet is executed in the artist's signature black-and-white sumizuri-e idiom, printed in carbon sumi on washi from cherry blocks Hiratsuka cut and pulled himself in keeping with the jiga jikoku jizuri doctrine of self-drawn, self-carved, and self-printed woodblock that he had done more than any contemporary to codify within the Nihon Sosaku-Hanga Kyokai. The compositions weight broadly massed darks against reserved areas of paper to register the contrast between dense plantings and open ground, with selective passages of more finely cut line for foliage and architectural detail. Issued from Hiratsuka's own workshop rather than through a commercial publisher, the Shinjuku Gyoen prints participate in the same documentary impulse that produced his Tokyo Recollections and his contributions to the Shin Tokyo hyakkei, and impressions are documented in the Smithsonian's National Museum of Asian Art, the Honolulu Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, and the Hiratsuka Un'ichi Print Museum in Suzaka.
Prints in This Series (1)
Complete series — all 1 prints catalogued.
Frequently Asked Questions
Shinjuku Gyoen Hanga, the Prints of the Shinjuku Imperial Garden, is a set in which Hiratsuka Un'ichi (1895-1997) recorded the formal landscape, glasshouses, and seasonal vegetation of the imperial garden in the western part of Tokyo, a topographically constrained project undertaken in his characteristic sosaku-hanga manner in the late 1930s or wartime period when he was at the height of his teaching and printmaking career. The Shinjuku Gyoen, established in the Meiji period on the former Naito daimyo estate and combining French, English, and Japanese garden styles, offered Hiratsuka a contained yet varied subject in which architectural set pieces such as the Taiwan Pavilion and the great glasshouse could be set against pine plantings, formal lawns, and the seasonal trees for which the garden was already famous. Each sheet is executed in the artist's signature black-and-white sumizuri-e idiom, printed in carbon sumi on washi from cherry blocks Hiratsuka cut and pulled himself in keeping with the jiga jikoku jizuri doctrine of self-drawn, self-carved, and self-printed woodblock that he had done more than any contemporary to codify within the Nihon Sosaku-Hanga Kyokai. The compositions weight broadly massed darks against reserved areas of paper to register the contrast between dense plantings and open ground, with selective passages of more finely cut line for foliage and architectural detail. Issued from Hiratsuka's own workshop rather than through a commercial publisher, the Shinjuku Gyoen prints participate in the same documentary impulse that produced his Tokyo Recollections and his contributions to the Shin Tokyo hyakkei, and impressions are documented in the Smithsonian's National Museum of Asian Art, the Honolulu Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, and the Hiratsuka Un'ichi Print Museum in Suzaka.
The Prints of the Shinjuku Imperial Garden (Shinjuku Gyoen hanga) series contains 1 prints, created by Hiratsuka Un'ichi.
The Prints of the Shinjuku Imperial Garden (Shinjuku Gyoen hanga) series was created by Hiratsuka Un'ichi (平塚運一).
We currently have 1 of 1 known prints from the Prints of the Shinjuku Imperial Garden (Shinjuku Gyoen hanga) series indexed in our collection. Browse them all on this page.
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