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Yoshitoshi’s
Battles Faces of Battle: Japanese Prints
from the Permanent Collection |
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Yoshitoshi, who is the
principal artist in this exhibition, favors a highly complex supercarriage
that dissolves at the focal point, melts away in beauty, it might as well be
said. His battle prints
sometimes bear a marked resemblance to Goya’s in some ways, a
gesticulation, a line of firing soldiers, a certain gruesomeness. In Yoshitsune Rescuing
Kenreimonin at the Battle of Yashima, the design is paramount, as far as
it goes, reading right-to-left in the Japanese manner. The hero has gained
the lady’s boat at night, and now finds her storm-tossed person. Yoshitoshi saw with his
own eyes the Battle of Ueno, and here again is a rather odd comment in the
two Italianate figures on the right conversing. They are perhaps in some way
Yoshitoshi and his fellow artist Toshikage, or else (right-to-left) the
dialogue preceding the conflict (The Battle of Sannō Shrine).
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