Hishikawa Moronobu

Takesai talking with servant (page from album with text) c. 1680
woodblock print
Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art
Purchased 1992
Queensland Art Gallery Foundation

In the catalogue for the 1913 exhibition Japanese Colour Prints at the Victoria & Albert Museum (which Margaret Preston is thought to have visited), curator Edward Strange described Hishikawa Moronobu as the ‘real founder of the Ukiyoye [sic] or Popular School of Painting in Japan’.

In her 1930 article ‘Wood-blocking as a craft’, published in Art in Australia, Preston similarly singled out Moronobu as the ‘great Japanese wood colour blocker’.

His subtly hand-coloured prints were prized for the quality of their line.