18 Facts About Hasui Kawase

Hasui Kawase was a Japanese artist who was one of 20th century Japan's most important and prolific printmakers.

Hasui Kawase designed almost one thousand woodblock prints over a career that spanned nearly forty years.

Hasui Kawase went to the school of the painter Aoyagi Bokusen as a young man.

Hasui Kawase sketched from nature, copied the masters' woodblock prints, and studied brush painting with Araki Kanyu.

Hasui Kawase's parents had him take on the family rope and thread wholesaling business, but its bankruptcy when he was 26 led him to pursue art.

Hasui Kawase lost 188 sketchbooks in which he had drawn landscapes and other subjects.

Hasui Kawase travelled the Hokuriku, San'in, and San'yo regions later in 1923 and upon his return in February 1924 developed his sketches into his third Souvenirs of Travel series.

Hasui Kawase's sketching trip at this time lasted 102 days, the longest trip of his life.

Hasui Kawase built a new house in Magome in 1930, and Moon at Magome from the series Twenty Views of Tokyo sold that year became his second best-selling work.

Hasui Kawase studied ukiyo-e and Japanese style painting at the studio of Kiyokata Kaburagi.

Hasui Kawase mainly concentrated on making watercolors of actors, everyday life and landscapes, many of them published as illustrations in books and magazines in the last few years of the Meiji period and early Taisho period.

Hasui Kawase's works became widely known in the West through American connoisseur Robert O Muller.

Landscape prints were the most popular of the shin-hanga, and their reputation in the United States reached its peak in the mid-1930s, when Hasui Kawase was considered the leading landscape printmaker.

Hasui Kawase had created around 620 prints over the course of his career.

Hasui Kawase worked almost exclusively on landscape and townscape prints based on sketches and watercolors he made in Tokyo and during travels around Japan.

Hasui Kawase considered himself a realist and employed his training in yoga in his compositions.

Hasui Kawase left a large body of woodblock prints and watercolors: many of the watercolors are linked to the woodblock prints.

Hasui Kawase produced oil paintings, traditional hanging scrolls and a few byobu.