Bonhams New York joined the Fall Asia Week auctions this week with two sales on Sept. 13: the Sartin Collection of Asian Art and Fine Japanese Works of Art.
Among the variety of collectable artifacts and art, the Japanese sale boasted an unusually large collection of Yoshida Hiroshi woodcuts and paintings from the collection of Yoshida Chizuko, the artist’s daughter-in-law.
“This collection comes from his descendants in Japan. His family has given us these paintings to sell because the recent earthquake and tsunami disaster made them worried they couldn’t protect the collection and that it [would] end up being lost. So they hope … they will sell and end up in safer places,” explained Jeff Olsen, Bonhams director of Japanese Art.
According to The Art of Japan website, “Yoshida Hiroshi (1876–1950) was 44 years old, with a very successful career as a painter already behind him, when he met Watanabe Shozaburo, who persuaded Yoshida to make his first woodcut. He subsequently became one of the most prolific and, at least in America, the best- known of the shin hanga artists.”
“He’d travel around the world and paint on location, then go back to his studio and design his woodcuts,” Olsen said.
“Woodcuts took time and required in-depth work with the carving and ink. It’s hard to say how many of his prints are out there, but it is a finite amount as he printed each individual work himself,” continued Olsen.
Many in the collection were familiar and loved works, but there were some even seasoned dealers hadn’t seen before, according to Olsen, so that was good for collectors.
Being works on paper, they are fragile, and many show slight signs or aging or marks. This is part of the reason for the range of price estimates, from the mid-hundreds to over $10,000.
From the 67 lots offered, a number of non-Japanese subjects done in traditional Japanese woodblock style did well. All but eight of the Yoshida collection sold during the sale, most achieving the pre-sale estimates.
During his 1924 tour of North America, Yoshida was inspired greatly by several landscapes, including Niagara Falls and the Grand Canyon. An oil on canvas titled “Niagara Falls” (1924), estimated at $4,000 to $6,000, sold for $6,875. “Grand Canyon” (1924) sold for $13,750, above the estimate of $8,000 to $12,000.
The highlight of the sale was the 1925 woodcut titled “Yosemitto-koku erukyapitan (El Capitan in Yosemite Valley)” which sold for $20,000, double the pre-sale estimate.
Other series covered in the sale included “Europe,” “Ten Views of Fuji,” and “India and Southwest Asia.”
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