Japan: 'Cormorant Fishing on Nagaragawa'. Kawase Hasui (1883-1957), 1954

Hasui Kawase (川瀬 巴水 Kawase Hasui, May 18, 1883 – November 7, 1957) was a prominent Japanese painter of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and one of the chief printmakers in the shin-hanga movement. Shin-hanga (新版画, lit. 'new prints', 'new woodcut (block) prints') was an art movement in early 20th-century Japan, during the Taishō and Shōwa periods, that revitalized traditional ukiyo-e art rooted in the Edo and Meiji periods (17th–19th century). It maintained the traditional ukiyo-e collaborative system (hanmoto system) where the artist, carver, printer, and publisher engaged in division of labor, as opposed to the sōsaku-hanga (creative prints) movement which advocated the principles of 'self-drawn' (jiga), 'self-carved' (jikoku) and 'self-printed' (jizuri), according to which the artist, with the desire of expressing the self, is the sole creator of art.

The movement flourished from around 1915 to 1942, though it resumed briefly from 1946 through the 1950s. Inspired by European Impressionism, the artists incorporated Western elements such as the effects of light and the expression of individual moods, but focused on strictly traditional themes of landscapes (fukeiga), famous places (meishō), beautiful women (bijinga), kabuki actors (yakusha-e), and birds and flowers (kachōga).

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