Hasui Kawase
Have you seen our new beautiful 12 Months Weekly Planner for 2027? Every week features a different masterpiece paired with the story behind it, turning your daily planning into a small journey through art history you can take everywhere with you. This beautiful landscape by Hasui Kawase is featured there. Check it out in the DailyArt Shop!
Kawase belonged to the shin-hanga (“new prints”) movement, characterized by artists who kept the old ukiyo-e woodblock process alive, using master carvers and printers, and aimed it at a rapidly modernizing Japan. His specialties were rain, snow, and dusk—the quiet moments that nobody else painted. This coastal print required a punishing production process, sometimes involving 20 or more separately carved blocks layered by hand to build up the color and light. Ironically, Kawase’s prints sold better abroad than at home for years, as Western collectors saw in them exactly the vanishing, atmospheric Japan for which they were nostalgic.
P.S. Explore the brilliant art of Hasui Kawase!