(Code #tj)
Hashiguchi Goyo was born at Kagoshima on December 2, 1880. He was the third son of Hashiguchi Kanemitsu, a samurai of Satsuma. In early life he was specially interested in swords and pictures, but it was not till his nineteenth year that he went to Tôkyô and became a pupil of Hashimoto Gaho the official painter to the Court. Later on he became the head pupil of the Art Association, Hakuba Kwai, at Tameike, and in 1900 entered the School of European Painting at Tôkyô. In 1907 he sent two oil paintings to the Tôkyô Exhibition, "A Peacock and an Indian Lady" and "Hagoromo," the former of which gained the first prize. In 1911, he won the first prize in a poster competition for the Mitsukoshi Department Store. He wrote numerous articles for art publications, compiled a monumental 12 volume work of representative Japanese prints, and supervised the execution of perhaps the finest reproductions ever made of original masterpieces by Hiroshige, Utamaro, etc. It was not until 1915 that he designed his first colour-print, a "Nude Woman after the Bath," at the invitation of master publisher Shôsaburô Watanabe. Goyo devoted the final years of his life to creating a series of colour woodblock prints of uncommon quality. Known as ukiyo-e, or pictures of the floating world, these prints were traditionally produced from the designs of famous artists by a team of specialized artisans supervised by a publisher. After an exhaustive study of the finest Japanese prints, Goyo recognized the limitations of this system. As a result, all but one of his colour prints were self-published, with Goyo himself supervising every aspect of design, block carving and printing. These notecards are from his renowned bijin ga (beautiful women) series.
