INAGAKI NENJIRO Japanese, 1902-1963 KOSANJI TEMPLE IN AUTUMN (MIKUMO, KYOTO), CIRCA 1959 woodblock print Unframed Japanese woodblock print depicts a temple pavilion nestled among stylized autumn hills, with the wooded slopes rendered in bold streaks of red, blue, and green set against a warm copper-toned background. A signature cartouche appears in the upper right, and the artist's red seal marks the lower left corner and its numbered 299 of an edition of 300. Printed on cream paper. Unframed.
$150-250
ARTIST PROFILE: Inagaki Nenjiro (1902–1963): Born Inagaki Toshijiro in Kyoto, Japan, on March 3, 1902, to painter Takejiro Inagaki, with a brother who became the nihonga painter Chusei Inagaki, Nenjiro Inagaki graduated from the Kyoto City University of Arts in March 1922 and soon after began work at the Matsuzakaya department store as a fabric dyer. There he developed expertise in the yuzen dyeing technique used for kimono textile design, eventually heading the Nasome Yuzen design department. He left the department store in 1931 to pursue his own career in design, becoming known for his kimono designs. In the 1950s, he worked briefly in woodcuts, producing a small group of color prints for the Mikumo Mokuhansha publishing house in Kyoto, printed from a single block with the different inks hand-applied before printing, their stylized quality reflecting the stencil-dyed textile techniques he'd spent his career refining. In 1958 he became a professor at the Kyoto Municipal Fine Arts College, and in 1962, the year before his death, he was designated a "Ningen Kokuho" (National Living Treasure) by the Japanese government under the category of Intangible Cultural Property. He died in 1963. His prints are held in major collections including the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
