Noël Nouët (1885-1969) | The complete set of Scenes of Tokyo, Twenty-four Views (Tokyo fukei zen nijuyonmai) | Showa period, 20th century

拍品描述

the complete set of twenty-four woodblock prints, plus the contents page, from the series Scenes of Tokyo, Twenty-four Views (Tokyo fukei zen nijuyonmai), variously signed in Roman script Noël Nouët or N. Nouët, and printed in Japanese Nuetto saku (made by Nouët), each titled in the lower right margin, publisher’s mark Hanmoto Doi (published by Doi) and watermark in the top left corner Do, carver’s mark To Ikeda (carved by Ikeda) and printer’s mark Suri Yokoi (printed by Yokoi), variously dated between 1935-1938 (25) Vertical oban: each approx. 39.5 x 26.5 cm, 15½ by 10⅜ in. The series Scenes of Tokyo, Twenty-four Views comprises twenty-four prints depicting celebrated locales of Tokyo in the 1930s. Nouët recorded the modernising city still steeped in tradition with the eye of a poet and urban chronicler. In these cityscapes, Tokyo remains recognisable from the meisho [lit. famous places] most popularly established by Utagawa Hiroshige (1797-1858) in the late Edo period (1615-1868). That tradition had been reinvigorated in the early twentieth century by the shin hanga movement, led by artists such as Kawase Hasui (1883-1957) in close collaboration with the publisher Watanabe Shozaburo (1885–1962). Nouët's prints were produced for the Tokyo publishing house of Doi. In 1936, a former student from the Tokyo Foreign Language School – the son of publisher Doi Sadaichi and older brother to his successor Doi Eiichi – offered to have his family's firm produce a woodblock print from one of Nouët's ink sketches. The project was technically demanding: Nouët's originals were drawn with a fountain pen, and their fine, precise lines presented a considerable challenge to the carver. Its success prompted Doi Sadaichi to publish the full series of twenty-four colour prints. Several of the views engage directly with Hiroshige's compositional devices. In Shinobazu Pond, a lamp is placed in the extreme foreground; the scene is viewed from a low vantage point, the night sky textured with prominent woodgrain and pricked by the light of a few stars. In Kameido, the silhouettes of visitors beside the Drum Bridge of the Kameido Shrine, dedicated to the scholar-deity Sugawara no Michizane (845-903), occupy the foreground, while wisteria in full bloom drapes sinuously from the pergola above. Nouët's Nihonbashi invites comparison with James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903), who was himself an admirer of Hiroshige: the atmosphere of nocturne made poignant by a solitary boatman passing beneath the bridge on the Nihonbashi River. Nouët also turned his eye to locales beyond the traditional Edo meisho. In Hibiya, the clock tower of the Municipal Hall is viewed across the pond at the height of summer. In Babasaki Gate, the view looks south from the bridge toward the structure across the moat of the Imperial Palace (the former Edo Castle), with the facades of the Meiji Seimeikan, the Metropolitan Police Board, the Tokyo Kaikan, the Teikoku Gekijo, and the Daiichi Seimei building ranged along Hibiya-dori beyond. Noël Nouët was born in Brittany in 1885. His mother collected woodblock prints by Hiroshige, acquired from a former French consul-general in Japan. He moved to Paris, where in literary and artistic salons he met several prominent Japanese writers and artists, among them the poets Tekkan (1873-1935) and Akiko Yosano (1878-1942). In 1926 he travelled to Japan to teach French at a secondary school in Shizuoka. He returned briefly to France before taking up a post at the Tokyo Foreign Language School in 1930. It was then that he began sketching the streets of Ginza and Kanda, retracing the sites depicted by Hiroshige. Nouët remained in Tokyo throughout the Second World War, one of the few foreign residents to do so. His home in Kojimachi was destroyed in the Allied bombing raids of March 1945. He continued to sketch regardless, recording the ruins of Ginza and Ueno with the same attentive eye he had turned on the living city. In 1946 he published Tokyo: Fifty Sketches at his own expense, a Japanese string-bound volume combining lyrical cityscapes with mournful records of devastation. After the war he taught at Waseda University and several other institutions. In 1951 he became French tutor to the future Emperor Akihito. He died in Tokyo on 2 October 1969. The series Scenes of Tokyo, Twenty-four Views comprises: - Contents page, publisher’s mark Hanmoto Doi hangaten [publisher: Doi print dealers] - Nihonbashi Bridge (Nihonbashi), inscribed, signed and dated Noël Nouët Tokyo 1936 - Kiocho (Kiocho), inscribed, signed and dated Tokyo 1937 Noël Nouët - Benkei Moat (Benkei bori), inscribed, signed and dated Tokyo 1936 N. Nouët - Yasukuni Shrine (Yasukuni jinja), inscribed, signed and dated Tokyo 1936 Noël Nouët - Kabukiza Threate (Kabuki-za), inscribed, signed and dated Noël Nouët Tokyo 1936 - Ikegami Honmonji Temple (Ikegami Honmonji), inscribed, signed and dated Tokyo 1937 Noël Nouët - Kagurazaka (Kagurazaka), inscribed, signed and dated Tokyo 1937 Noël Nouët - The Sumida River (Sumidagawa), inscribed, signed and dated Tokyo 1936 Noël Nouët - Babasakimon (Babasakimon), inscribed, signed and dated Tokyo 1936 Noël Nouët - Ueno Park (Ueno Koen), inscribed, signed and dated Tokyo 1936 Noël Nouët - Sakuradamon (Sakuradamon), inscribed, signed and dated Noël Nouët, Tokyo 1938 - Hibiya (Hibiya), embellished with mica to the margins, dated and signed Tokyo 1936 Noël Nouët - Inogashira Park (Inogashira koen), inscribed, signed and dated Tokyo 1936 Noël Nouët - Ryogoku Bridge (Ryogokubashi), inscribed, signed and dated Tokyo 1936 N. Nouët - Shinobazu Pond (Shinobazu no Ike), inscribed, signed and dated Tokyo 1936 Noël Nouët - Zozoji Temple (Zozoji), inscribed, signed and dated Noël Nouët Tokyo 1935 - Shiba Furukawa (Shiba Furukawa), inscribed, signed and dated Tokyo 1936 Noël Nouët - Sensoji Temple (Sensoji), inscribed, signed and dated Tokyo 1936 Noël Nouët - Meiji Shrine (Meiji Jingu), inscribed, signed and dated Tokyo 1936 Noël Nouët - Kameido (Kameido), signed and dated 1936 Noël Nouët - Ochanomizu (Ochanomizu), inscribed, signed and dated Tokyo 1936 Noël Nouët - The Black Gate (Kuromon), inscribed, signed and dated Tokyo 1936 N. Nouët - The Bellflower Gate (Kikyomon), lightly embellished with mica overall, signed and dated N. Nouët 1935 (without printed Japanese signature in the bottom margin) - Akasaka Mitsuke (Akasaka Mitsuke), inscribed, signed and dated Tokyo 1936 Noël Nouët

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