Japanese Woodblock Print, 1924, published by Sato Shotaro

SIZE IN INCHES: 16 x 11.25

MIKI SUIZAN (1887-1957) was in Kinashi in Hyogo Prefecture, northwest of Osaka. His birth name was Miki Saiichiro and he likely took the go (artist name) Suizan while studying Japanese-style painting from 1903 to 1913 with the famous Kyoto nihonga painter Takeuchi Seiho (1864-1942. Starting in 1913 he exhibited at the government sponsored exhibitions Bunten and its successors Teiten and Shin-Bunten. At the 13th Teiten in 1932 he was accorded mukansa or non-vetted status, "which was reserved for artists who contributed greatly to contemporary painting over the course of many years, and allowed Suizan to exhibit his work freely at the official exhibitions without the usual application and vetting process." He is known for his paintings of beautiful women, bijin-ga, in the nihonga style.

Suizan's work is in the collections of the Tokyo Museum of Modern Art, the Kyoto Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Toledo Museum of Art, which holds his 14 prints, and other prominent museums. His 1934 Teiten and 1939 Shin-Bunten paintings are in the collection of the National Museum of Korea, and are illustrated in the Kyoto National Museum of Modern Art catalogue, Japanese Modern Art Collection from the National Museum of Korea.

While Suizan's fame rests on his paintings, he created fourteen print designs around 1924 for the Kyoto publisher Sato Shotaro, who also published works for the artist Yoshikawa Kanpo (1894-1979). Suizan's fourteen prints for Shotaro were published in 1924 and 1925 and consist of two series, one made up of eight landscapes in horizontal format and known as New Selection of Noted Places of Kyoto, (First Series), the other made up of six portraits of beauties (bijin-ga) in vertical format and known as New Selection of Noted Places of Kyoto, (Second Series), both in the shin hanga style. SuizanÂ’s designs were carved by Maeda Kentaro and printed by Oiwa Tokuzo, employed by Sh?tar?. All fourteen of these prints were displayed in the seminal Toledo exhibition in 1930.

VG, no flaws of note