Flowers by the Great Masters of Japanese Printmaking (Box Set)

This box set celebrates the theme of flowers, and more generally nature, which are so important in Japanese art, through a selection of the most famous prints of the ancestral kachô-ga genre, these “pictures of flowers and animals,” from the Hokusai era to the early 20th century.
From the beginning of the 19th century, faced with the country's isolationist policy, the Japanese aspired to more freedom, and found in nature an escape from the prevailing claustrophobia and the asphyxiation that threatened them in the long term.

Reconnect with nature, listen to the rhythm of the seasons, admire plum or cherry blossoms, savor the freshness of the evening, contemplate the first snows, or witness the flight of cranes or wild geese are all occasions for long journeys or simple walks.
Hokusai and Hiroshige captured this evolution of Japanese society, which they transcended in their magnificent flower prints.

Combining realism and spirituality, direct observation and interpretation imbued with Shintoism and Buddhism, Hokusai (1760-1849) and Hiroshige (1797-1858) brought the representation of a magnified nature to perfection. Both starting from the observation of fauna and flora, they expressed, through different styles, their permanence and their state of eternal recommencement, as well as their fragile and ephemeral character.

No great print master has captured the soul of Japanese nature as well as Hokusai. For Edmond de Goncourt, he is "the universal painter who, with the most lively drawing, reproduced man, woman, bird, fish, tree, flower, blade of grass [...] who brought into his work the entire humanity of his country."

These two great names of printmaking would inspire many artists, especially those of the Shin-hanga ("new prints") movement, such as Imao Keinen (1845-1924) or Ohara Koson (1877-1945), who would in turn celebrate flowers and nature, and become passionate about their slightest variations, drawing from their forms and textures a formidable source of graphic inspiration.
This selection of the most beautiful prints dedicated to flowers is not merely descriptive but reveals how artists dream them, fantasize about them and give them their own symbolic force. Flowers thus become the expression of emotions, but also of a deep relationship with nature, more than ever at the heart of current concerns.