Kawase, Hasui

Hasui Kawase was born in Tokyo in the family of a merchant. Due to serious health problems that bothered him all his life until his death, he spent a significant part of his childhood in the vicinity of Siobara where his aunt lived. At twelve years old, he was forced to leave school ^[2] . The desire to become an artist was supported by his sister, who helped him financially during the years of study and the first years of independent work. He began painting at the age of fourteen in the workshop of the artist Bokusen Aoyagi, but was forced to leave them at the insistence of his father. My father wanted Kawase to continue his family business. The conflict with his son was settled when his sister married a store employee and took on business responsibilities ^[3] .

He worked in the technique of watercolor and oil painting. A student of Saburosuke Okada , who considered himself an artist of a European school, he followed Western traditions at that time, admiring the paintings of artists of the White Horse Society group. At 26, he tried to enroll in Kaburagi Kiyokate (an artist who worked in the traditional Japanese style), but he first refused him, and then still accepted. It was Kiyokate who gave him a new creative name - "Khasuy" , although the greatest influence on his style, according to Kawase himself, was exerted by the work of another artist - Imamura Siko (1880-1916) ^[2] . Two years of training with Kaburagi yielded results - a major publisher Shodzaburo Watanabe began to collaborate with a young artist ^[4] . The artist himself later admitted that his work was greatly influenced by his acquaintance with the cycle of the artist Shinsui Ito “Eight Views of Lake Biwa ”, which was presented at the joint exhibition of the art societies “Ugokai” and “Kyodokai” ^[5] . At this time, Kawase actively worked with major Japanese magazines, engaged in their design ^[2] .

The artist often traveled in search of nature. He was short and short-sighted, which gave him additional difficulties in work. Hasui Kawase was forced to wear thick glasses. He spent a lot of money on traveling, so he did not get rich, although he lived in abundance. Lost his home twice: in 1923 during the great Kanto earthquake , and then after the bombing of Tokyo in 1945 ^[3] .

From 1918 to 1923, Hasui Kawase collaborated with the leader of the Sin-Hang school Watanabe, who tried to give Ukiyo-e traditional engraving a great personality. The first experience of their collaboration was “Four Types of Hot Springs in Siobar” (1918). The most striking works of this time were two series of Kawase landscapes: “Memories of the journey” (between 1919 and 1923) and “The Twelve Views of Tokyo” (1919) ^[5] .

During this period, Kawase received an order for the execution of eight landscapes of the villa and garden of Baron Koyota Iwasaki; engravings were subsequently used as souvenirs for the guests of the baron. Koyata Iwasaki (1879-1945) is a Japanese entrepreneur, the fourth leader of the Zitsa Mitsubishi Group from 1916 to 1945, one of the richest and most influential people of that time ^[6] .

Watanabe has published over one hundred Kawase works. During the fire after the earthquake of September 1, 1923, the Watanabe printing house and Kawase's house burned down ^[3] . The artist also worked with other publishers, including: Kawaguchi in 1929, Doi Teikichi in 1931, Iida in 1932 and others ^[5] .

Kawase's work was well represented at collective exhibitions of Japanese artists in Spain (“Special Exhibition of Contemporary Japanese Engravings”, Toledo , 1930; “Contemporary Japanese Engravings: Ten Artists in the Last Five Years, Toledo, 1936). During World War II, he spent a lot of time in Siobar. After the war, his fame in Europe was used by the Japanese government to represent the country in travel publications ^[2] .

In 1956, Kawase received the honorary title of "Living National Treasure of Japan . " He died at the age of 74. During his life, Kawase created more than 600 rural and urban landscapes ^[7] . In Japan, Kawase, along with Hokusai and Hiroshige , currently makes up the three largest Japanese painters. He became known in the West thanks to the American collector Robert O. Muller (1911-2003). It was with the acquisition of the work of Hasuya Kawase for $ 5 in 1931 that he began to create his Japanese collection ^[8] .

For a long time, the artist was better known abroad than at home. Recently, interest in his work has revived in Japan. Large exhibitions of the artist’s works took place in the Chiba Museum of Art in 2013-2014 ^[9] and in the memorial museum of the Bank of Maruyama in 2015-2016 ^[10] .

Hasui Kawase specialized in portraying landscapes . In his engravings there are images of people, but they are few. They perform the function of staffing in the paintings of Western European landscape painters. Even in paintings depicting cities, there are only deserted streets. Kawase himself explained this by the difficulties of creating a sketch, since people are not static ^[3] . He created prints, watercolors, oil paintings. Like the impressionists , the artist depicted elements of everyday life: houses, fields, streams, hills. Like Claude Monet, he painted the same places at different times of the day, in different weathers, he liked to depict rain and snow. He experimented with light, depicting an object first on a sunny day, and then on a moonlit night. Kawase considered himself a realist and used the knowledge of Western painting in his compositions. He also engaged in art painting on fabric and created traditional hanging scrolls and screens ^[11] .

While traveling in Japan, Kawase wrote sketches that he later painted; upon his return to the capital, he transferred the work to woodcuts and printers, but continued to participate in the production process and further (in the engraving of the boards from which the prints are made). Kawase noted that the print could look better than his sketch, but could be inferior to him ^[3] .

Kawase's works are in great demand among collectors. Prices range from a few hundred to several thousand dollars, respectively, for prints after and before the 1923 earthquake. In addition to the state of the engraving, which is a critical cost factor, the price also depends on when the copy was printed. Specialists distinguish five main periods: 1) the period before the earthquake (until September 1923), 2) before the Second World War, 3) until 1945, 4) after the Second World War until the artist's death in 1957, 5) posthumous circulations from 1958 Until 1988, these publications were printed from the original stones and were published by the grandson of Shodzaburo Watanabe, they are handmade, but their prices are much lower compared to the early pre-war publications ^[3] .

• Hasui, Kawase, 1883-1957 (inaccessible link) . Floating World Gallery. Date of treatment December 4, 2016. Archived December 20, 2016.
• Wanczura, Dieter. Kawase Hasui - 1883–1957 . Artelino Date of treatment November 10, 2016.
• Kawase Hasui (川 瀬 巴 水) (Biographical details) (neopr.) . Trustees of the British Museum. Date of treatment November 21, 2016.
• Newland, Amy Reigle. Visions of Japan - Kawase Hasui's masterpieces. - Amsterdam: Hotei Publishing, 2004 .-- 149 p. - ISBN 90-74822-68-1 .
• Merritt, Helen; Yamada, Nanako. Kawase Hasui // Guide to Modern Japanese Woodblock Prints: 1900–1975. - Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1995 .-- 367 p. - ISBN 0-8248-1732-X .

• Artist Hasui Kawase. Collection of works (English) . Hanga Gallery, Torii Gallery. Date of treatment November 21, 2016.