Japanese Woodblock Print, 1916, published by Kanao Bunendo, Tokyo; full title is Owada. A waterside scene with many black and white ducks near a submerged dock

SIZE IN INCHES: aiban, 9.5 x 13.75 inches

COMMENTS: Number 1 from the most famous and ambitous work of the "sketch-tour books" popular in Japan in the early twentieth century. The series includes 30 large-format prints of views of places around Osaka and Kobe. The blocks and all copies in storage at the publisher were destroyed in the great Kanto earthquake of 1923.

NODA KYUHO (1879-1971) given name Dosan, was born in Tokyo in 1879. He studied Japanese-style painting with Kogyo Terazaki (1866-1919) and Western style painting at Hakubakai (The White Horse Society). He attended the Tokyo School of Fine Arts for a year around 1896 where he developed the sketching ability that allowed him to earn his living as an illustrator for the Osaka newspaper Asahi shinbun. In Osaka, he also did book illustration and became a friend of the nihonga and woodblock artist Tsunetomi Kitano (1880-1947). In 1917 he returned to Tokyo where he remained, concentrating on nihonga paintings with cultural and religious themes.

He exhibited at the government sponsored Bunten (Fine Art Exhibition of the Ministry of Education) and his work Tsitji Seppo (Roadside Preaching), won an award at the first Bunten in 1907. He was one of five artists working for the Asahi shinbun who contributed to the 1916 series Pictures of famous places in Osaka and Kobe (Hanshin meisho zue) and to Supplements of the Complete Works of Chikamatsu Manzaemon, 1922-1925. Several of his paintings are held by The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo.

VG, flaws as shown