Yellow Iris

This print focusing on abstracted floral imagery is one of Yoshida Fujio’s best-known works. She only began printmaking in her sixties, after the death of her husband, when she felt that she had more freedom to experiment with abstraction and also had the encouragement of her son, Hodaka. Fujio may have been the first female Japanese artist to travel to America: she visited the country in 1903–4 with her adopted brother, Hiroshi, whom she later married. She was renowned in Japan for the oil paintings and watercolors she had shown in annual government-sponsored exhibitions.