The fantastic, the charming, the sensuous—the revolutionary ukiyo-e artist who depicted them all.
Yoshitoshi Tsukioka (1839–1892) lived amid the tumult of the collapse of the Tokugawa shogunate and the remaking of Japan into a modern nation. Combining the inventiveness of his teacher, Utagawa Kuniyoshi, with Western realism, he published prints that lent a last dazzling glow to ukiyo-e in the closing days of its history. This collection presents selections from major series including Thirty-Six Transformations with its masterly ghouls and ghosts, the realism-focused Newly Selected Eastern Brocade Pictures, Thirty-Two Aspects of Contemporary Women presaging bijinga portraits of beauties by modern artists, and Yoshitoshi's late masterpiece, One Hundred Views of the Moon. Delight in 150 works by a genius who ever challenged the expressive frontiers of his own dying genre even as he pointed the way forward for Japanese-style art in the modern and contemporary eras.
