Kanae Yamamoto

Kanae Yamamoto 

(山本鼎 1882-1946)

painter, founder of modern Japanese printmaking
(Sosaka Hanga), socialist and idealist. 
Theorist & Inventor of Craypas  pastel crayons.

Self portrait Kanae Yamamoto, 1915 & Vincent van Gogh, 1888 

In two of my last postings images by Kanae Yamamoto were used. I first read about this printmaker in Clives' Art end the Aesthete (here*). Then I stumbled over a picture used in Lillies Japonisme blog later finding, to my surprise, a "Brittany cow overlooking the sea" print for my Red Heads posting.  

Kanae educated and trained in woodengraving both privately and in Tokyo Art School started the movement of Sosako Hanga, simply said doing all the work on the carving and printing himself and not aided by staff. All started with this first print (Fisherman) in 1904. Pioneering and introducing a new way of printmaking without a black (tying the composition together) keyblock.


So, scattered over the internet there is information and are examples of Yamamoto's prints and paintings but nowhere the two are combined. There's an actual Yamamoto Museum in Japan but its digital museum/website (in Japanese) is hard to understand and  shows very few actual pictures. And there's the excellent biography by Dieter Wanczura (Artelino) you must read: (here*)

Compare Kanae Yamamoto's Brittany bathers with similar compositions by Paul Gauguin.  

From 1912 to 1916 Kanae was in France, studying in Paris in the Academie Julian (like Carl Moser (below) did before him) and working mostly in Brittany, sending home his prints to finance his stay obroad. So surprisingly we find Urushibara (arriving 1907) wasn't the only Japanese printmaker staying in Europe at the time. This may also explain the rather odd publishing dates of some of his prints. Created in France, they were send back and published later, some of them probably even when he was already back in Japan. 

Eugene Boudin (l) and Kanae Yamamoto (around 1914)
(It would be very rewarding finding which village Yamamoto is showing)

In Yamamoto's Brittany prints we'll find obvious influences by French impressionist artists. However most of them already history by the time he arrived. Vincent van Gogh (1853 died 1890), Paul Gauguin (1848 died 1903) Claude Monet and Eugène Boudin (1824 died 1884) the landscape, and famous for his cows, painter. 

 Paintings of haystacks by Claude Monet and Yamamoto

Bu surely many of their works will have echoed in the region and in Paris. But post impressionist painter Paul Serusier (1863-1927) I'm convinced he will have met. And possibly Maurice Denis (1870-1943). It is interesting comparing some of Yamamoto's Japanese prints with works of resemblance by his fellow artists and see how this earliest Modern Printmaker set the way the way for his colleagues

Kanae Yamamoto

Paul Serusier and Carl Moser

French (Paris) printmaker Henri Rivière (1864-1951) who stayed and worked in Brittany 1884 from 1916, so when Yamamoto was actually there, was probably the greatest artistic influence on the younger printmaker Yamamoto.

Kanae Yamamoto

 Carl Moser and Henri Rivière

painting by Maurice Denis (1870-1943), the Cow Girl 1893

Kanae Yamamoto

 Paul Gauguin and "the crashing wave"by  Henri Rivière

Austrian printmaker Carl Moser (who took woodcarving lessons from Emil Orlik) also spend the summer months and stayed and travelled Brittany between 1900-1907, the year Yamamoto arrived. Even back in Austria Moser  kept on making prints of Brittany girls, Britany bonnets and Brittany landscapes.

Breton girl: Kanae Yamamoto

 Breton girls Paul Gauguin and Paul Serusier

And ofcourse French printmaker Amadée Joyau (1872-1913) worked in Brittany at the time Yamamoto stayed there. I've shown him in the Linosaurus before (here*)

And Czech printmaker Frantisek Simon (1877-1942 when living and working in Paris from 1907-1913 also visited "la Bretagne" and etched her rugged coast. 

Two of his woodblocks probably published in Japan: left, in a combined cutting and engraving technique (click to see details !) a French provincial  village (which ?) and right a maybe Russian panorama considering the shape of the church towers. Yamamoto made his way home avoyding war troubled Europe in 1916 through Scandinavia and Russia. Note in both prints his soft and consistent use of a pastel pallet.  

Above two examples of Yamamoto's qualities as an oilpainter: a Brittany beach and a later Japanese beach scene showing he best fits the description being a Japoanese Post Impressionist painter.

 Paul Gauguin and Kanae Yamamoto

"On the deck" a print probably made when he just had returned in Japan. It is dated 1917 and is showing a Japanese Fisherman working his nets. This last example, the group fishermen at a beach at sunset (or rise), proof of his superior cutting skills. I couldn't find a date, but the way he created the different expressions, shades of gray and structures of cloth of the robes with a simple cutting tool is almost incredible.

Being a theorist and idealist Yamamoto also invented and created the first use and production of color pastels in 1925. Together with a course in drawing for children according to the theory of Jiyu-ga (Drawing without a Master) Perfected, these artist materials are in use world wide both as original Sakura Craypas pastels (read more here*) as dozens of brands worldwide.

This posting has been one my most elaborate sofar, trying to create something that wasn't there before. It's by no means meant as definitive, at best a starting point for further interest for others. 
Some pictures I borrowed and reblogged from "Japonism" and the "Blue Lantern".

Amédee Joyau: PS

PS: For those readers interested:

I forgot to mention this: two of these (very rare) prints, "Ypres Falaises in Moonlight" and the vertical "Roscoff" are momentarily offered by Michel Cabotse at:

www.michelcabotse.com.

Amédee Joyau

Amédee Joyau
1873-1913
French etcher and woodblock printer
(and contemporary to the French art group the Nabis)

There is not much to be found on the www. about this very subtle French printer. He was a contemporary of the more famous Henri Rivière (1864-1951). Both did different things artistically up to the moment they discovered woodblock printing.

les falaises , claire de lune, Yport (moonlight over cliffs)

Amédee was trained an etcher (copper plates) but after discovering the Japanese printing method in 1894 (as did Rivière a couple of years earlier) devoted the rest of his short life to the learning, perfecting and expressing his feelings into woodblock printing. Together they are among the very first block printing artist in Europe creating prints in the Japanese style and tradition.

Boats in Roscoff 1903/1904 and twilight in the Karpathes.

At first he was inluenced by and worked in the style of the Nabis (post impressionistic French art group with distinct feelings on color and atmosphere) of which the portrait of his wife (the print named l'Intimité) is a nice (and my only) example. From the odd 135 printed works that are known by his hand some 50 supposedly are woodblock prints. Most of them coastal scenery, ports and villages of his native Brittany and Normandy but also of Paris, the beach at le Touquet and Yport and Belgium.

Roscoff, Brittany

Henri Rivières name is much more remembered, he made many more prints and did some commercially interesting and clever things for those days. Most of his prolific work too is about Brittany and Paris (his clever Hiroshige copy of the 52 stages of the road to Hokaido) although Rivière made prints until 1917. After that year Rivière abandoned print making all together and only painted in watercolor until his death in 1951. There are several modern picture books covering all of his work as Joyau’s work is hardly known or remembered but to a limited group of connoisseurs and financially solid print collectors. Henri Rivière even has his own great website.

sur la falaises, Donville (on the cliffs)

Comparing the two printers discloses many similarities but the few prints by Amédee that I found showing he was the real master of the leaving out. He needs even less than Rivière does, close to nothing, to evoke the atmosphere of the sea, coastal regions and the ports.

Place St. Ayoul (Provins)

25 years after his untimely death in 1913 a catalogue of his work was made (Atherton Curtis in 1938: catalogue de l’oeuvre de Amédee Joyau).

Twilight in Villiers (Crepuscule Villiers)

These days Amédee’s prints are quite rare and thus expensive ($ 700 and way upwards) and the catalogue, when and if you might find a copy doesn't come cheap either. Maybe a reader has the knowledge of what is inside and is willing to share its contents. These are all the pictures I could scratch together (and borrowed freely). Remarkably little considering the 50 known and mentioned. Maybe they are all locked up in private collections.

Maybe readers who know of other examples of prints and are willing to send them allowing me to do a follow up.

watercolor by Amèdee Joyau.

On his biography I discovered that his father was an architect (Achille Joseph Louis Joyau, born Nantes 1831-1873) and trained artist who left young Amédee orphaned at a very young age.

A watercolor, named the old village, by his fathers’ hand hangs in the Boston Museum (US) and Joyau Sr. is also commemorated winning the Grand Prix de Rome for architecture in 1860. Quite prestigeous. I found one Amédee Joyau marrying the widdow of a freed slave who committed suicide in Martinique in 1847. Probably a relative, maybe his grandfather or a great-uncle. The family name translates in: Juwel. His marriage (there is the picture of his wife) produced at least one son: Alban Joyau. He is mentioned as the provenance of 4 prints that were sold some time ago.

Please don’t hesitate to send any pictures of prints of Amédee you might want to share to do him the honour and put him into the light were he belongs and which he deserves.