Artist Biographies: Tsukioka Yoshitoshi & Helen Hyde

yo o komete

terimasarishi ka

natsu no tsuki

holding back the night

with its increasing brilliance

the summer moon

— Yoshitoshi's death poem

Tsukioka Yoshitoshi

Tsukioka Yoshitoshi 月岡芳年 (1839-1892) was and is still regarded as one of the last great ukiyo-e artists. When he was eleven years old, Yoshitoshi was apprenticed to Utagawa Kuniyoshi 歌川 國芳 (1797-1861), who influenced Yoshitoshi’s interests in Western artistic styles and historical representation. However, he did not start large scale production until 1858. Beginning in the mid-1800s, traditional woodblock printing declined due to the introduction of lithography and photography. Despite initial successes with his 1865 series, One Hundred Ghost Tales from China and Japan, Yoshitoshi found himself struggling against the changing values and tastes of art consumers. Having witnessed the turbulent transformation of Japan through the Meiji Restoration before his very eyes, he is known for his depictions of gruesome violence and psychological tension, a reflection of Japan’s tumultuous political situation, as well as his own mental trauma.

Only towards the end of his life did he attain the financial and emotional stability that allowed him to create some of his best-known designs. By then he had perfected his unique style, which portrayed traditional Japanese subjects like religion, mythology, and urban culture with Western color combination and spatial conventions. One of his most famous print series, One Hundred Aspects of the Moon 月百姿 (1885-1892) depicts a selection of old Japanese stories, myths, and legends associated with the moon. Drawing from his own life experiences and the moon’s continuously changing phases, this series of prints explores the range of human emotions and also expresses Yoshitoshi’s desire to look back to the past, before the Meiji Restoration, to a Japan yet influenced by the Western powers while presenting a modern take on ukiyo-e in his own inescapable style.

Helen Hyde

Helen Hyde was a successful American woman printmaker during the early twentieth century, best known for her Japonism prints and drawings. She was first introduced to Japanese prints and their impact on Western art during travels in Europe, and was particularly influenced by artists such as Mary Cassatt. From 1899 to 1914, Hyde lived primarily in Japan, where she learned Japanese woodblock printing techniques.

In Japan, Hyde found a community of other American and European expatriate women and artists. She also studied under Kano Tomonobu 狩野友信 (1843-1912), the last of the Kano school painters. The Kano school is known as the most influential school of Japanese painting that had served as the official painters for the Shogun for nearly three hundred years. By Hyde’s time, they were considered conservative in their techniques. Hyde’s interaction with such a prestigious group of artists highlights her intention to immerse herself in traditional Japanese culture.

Many of her popular works depict Japanese women and children in both domestic and outdoor settings, as seen in her proposed album collection Songs of the Japanese Children (1901). Her work was derived from boshi-e 母子絵, a subgenre of ukiyo-e woodblock prints that translates to “mother and child pictures.” Boshi-e prints typically show private, domestic scenes in which the viewer is invited into an intimate moment between family. Hyde’s focus on genial childhood subjects set her apart from other, predominantly male, Japonism artists who often focused on exotic subjects or “beautiful woman,” such as geishas. Hyde preserved and promoted the aesthetics of pre-industrial Japan, such as its natural landscapes and traditional clothes and houses, while also creating scenes of familial intimacy and youthful joy that appeal to universal audiences.

Grace Kim (MA ‘22), Suyog Prajapati (MA ‘21), Cara Del Gaudio (‘21), Izumi Umeda (‘21)

Bibliography

The Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge. “About Yoshitoshi.” www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/gallery/yoshitoshi/about.html.

Griffith, Paul. “Tsukioka Yoshitoshi.” Grove Art Online. Accessed December 3, 2020. http://www.oxfordartonline.com/groveart/view/10.1093/gao/9781884446054.001.0001/oao-9781884446054-e-7000086448.

Kumon Museum of Children's Ukiyo-e. "Ukiyo-e by Category." ​Accessed December 4, 2020. www.kumon-ukiyoe.jp/ en/category.php.

McG., K. W. "Helen Hyde." Bulletin of the Art Institute of Chicago (1907-1951), vol. 14, no. 5, May 1920, pp. 70-71, www.jstor.org/stable/4116241. Accessed 18 Dec. 2020.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "The Kano School of Painting."Accessed 18 Dec. 2020. www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/kano/hd_kano.htm.

Tjardes, Tamara. One Hundred Aspects of the Moon: Japanese Woodblock Prints by Yoshitoshi. Santa Fe, N.M: Museum of New Mexico Press, 2003.