Sailboats on the Inland Sea

Sailboats float in a harbor as the fading sun casts a rusty glow over a promontory dotted with trees. Executed with many of the same materials and techniques seen in traditional ink paintings in East Asia, the painter also used perspective and shading, methods more commonly associated with Western painting. This work is a rare example of a Japanese-style ink painting by Yoshida Hiroshi, an artist best known for his woodblock prints as well as Western-style oil paintings and watercolors. Created in the 1930s, the painting may have been inspired by sketches that Yoshida made in 1910, when he traveled to Japan’s Inland Sea. These drawings served as source material for some of his most popular work: two series of woodblock prints published in 1921 and 1926 showing a sailboat—one almost identical to that seen in the foreground of this painting—at different times of the day.