Tsukioka Yoshitoshi

Born Edo [now Tokyo], 1839; died Edo, 1892.

Japanese printmaker. At the age of 11 he was apprenticed to the ukiyoe artist Utagawa Kuniyoshi (see Utagawa, (6)), who was to have a pronounced influence on his future work, in both Yoshitoshi’s penchant for historical themes and his interest in Western art. In 1853 Yoshitoshi designed his first woodblock print, but no further work is known until 1858, when, following the Utagawa masters, he produced comic and actor prints ( yakushae). From 1862 he began to produce pictures of warriors (mushae) and other historical subjects, which were to be amongst his most important themes. After his father’s death in 1863, he seems to have been adopted by the Tsukioka family, for he began to sign works Tsukioka Yoshitoshi. His first critical success came with the print series Wakan hyaku monogatari (‘100 ghost tales from China and Japan’; 1865; e.g. London, V&A). At around this time the lifting of the government ban on illustrating contemporary events allowed Yoshitoshi to depict murders and wars ever more realistically. He produced Eimei nijuhasshuku (‘28 famous murders with poems’; 1866–7) in collaboration with Utagawa Yoshiiku (1833–1904). Bloodshed and violence were not new to ukiyoe, but in answer to the increasing demand for horror and the grotesque towards the end of the 19th century Yoshitoshi’s designs show an extreme of gruesome detail, possibly reflecting the artist’s own slightly unbalanced and sadistic nature. In the early 1870s he suffered a mental breakdown, but he recovered in 1874 and took the new surname Taiso (‘Great Resurrection’). From then on Yoshitoshi produced illustrations of current events for the newspapers, which became his major source of income. By the early 1880s he was the most popular artist of his day; his works after 1885 are generally considered to be his best. His most famous prints include the series of diptychs Shinsen azuma nishikie (‘A new selection of eastern colour prints’; 1885–9; e.g. Philadelphia, PA, Mus. A.), Tsuki hyakushi (‘One hundred aspects of the moon’; 1885–92; Amsterdam, Rijksmus.) and Shinkei sanju-rokkaisen (‘New forms of 36 ghosts’; 1889–92). In contrast to his earlier preoccupation with martial subjects, Yoshitoshi also treated the theme of beautiful women in the series Fuzoku sanjuniso (‘32 aspects of women’; 1888; e.g. Philadelphia, PA, Mus. A.). Despite his highly individual range of subject-matter, Yoshitoshi is often considered one of the last great masters of the ukiyoe tradition (see Japan, §IX, 3(iii)).There are good collections of Yoshitoshi’s works at the Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA, and the Museés Royaux d’Art et d’Histoire, Brussels.

Paul Griffith. "Tsukioka Yoshitoshi." In Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online, http://www.oxfordartonline.com.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/subscriber/article/grove/art/T086448 (accessed May 8, 2012).