Rare Antique Japanese

RARE Antique French Japanese Orientalist Woodblock Print, Jacoulet Signed

RARE Antique French Japanese Orientalist Woodblock Print, Jacoulet Signed
RARE Antique French Japanese Orientalist Woodblock Print, Jacoulet Signed
RARE Antique French Japanese Orientalist Woodblock Print, Jacoulet Signed
RARE Antique French Japanese Orientalist Woodblock Print, Jacoulet Signed
RARE Antique French Japanese Orientalist Woodblock Print, Jacoulet Signed
RARE Antique French Japanese Orientalist Woodblock Print, Jacoulet Signed
RARE Antique French Japanese Orientalist Woodblock Print, Jacoulet Signed
RARE Antique French Japanese Orientalist Woodblock Print, Jacoulet Signed
RARE Antique French Japanese Orientalist Woodblock Print, Jacoulet Signed
RARE Antique French Japanese Orientalist Woodblock Print, Jacoulet Signed
RARE Antique French Japanese Orientalist Woodblock Print, Jacoulet Signed
RARE Antique French Japanese Orientalist Woodblock Print, Jacoulet Signed

RARE Antique French Japanese Orientalist Woodblock Print, Jacoulet Signed
This is a wonderful and highly collectable RARE Antique French Japanese Orientalist Woodblock Print, by pioneering French - Japanese printmaker and Orientalist artist, Paul Jacoulet 1902 - 1960. This work is titled: Fleurs du Soir. Truck - Toloas (1941,) and depicts the portrait of a young and beautiful Pacific islander woman, surrounded by large and overgrown lily flowers, and wearing an ornate pale pink gown. In the upper right corner of the scene, a luminescent silver toned spider web is visible. Pencil signed in graphite by the artist at the lower right edge.

Additionally, this print is titled: Fleurs du Soir. Truck - Toloas, in the lower right corner, however this is partially obscured by the frame. Approximately 17 3/4 x 21 3/4 inches including frame. Actual artwork is approximately 12 x 16 inches.

Good condition for over 80 years of age, with light toning and sun fading to the paper, and one spot of faint staining in the lower right corner please see photos. Acquired in Orange County, California. This print is one of Jacoulet's most coveted and famous woodblock prints and is priced to sell.

If you like what you see, I encourage you to make an Offer. Please check out my other listings for more wonderful and unique artworks! Art critics have said of this piece.

This richly sensual and yet dignified portrait ranks with'Belle de Yap' among the artist's finest South Seas prints. The composition reveals its mastery as light strikes the spiderweb that fills the upper right. The elaborately balanced web is made of powdered silver, and seems to float in front of light green leaves trembling in the dark night. Paul Jacoulet (1902 - 1960) was active/lived in Japan, France.

Paul Jacoulet is known for Ukiyo-e printmaking, portraits, woodblocks. Paul Jacoulet is best known for his striking portraits of the natives of Asia and the South Seas. He designed over 160 woodblock prints and oversaw their production in his workshop. Following in the collaborative tradition of ukiyo-e printmaking, Jacoulet recruited talented carvers and printers who could duplicate the delicate lines of his drawings and watercolors. The exquisite quality of Jacoulet's prints was due in great part to his exacting standards, and his use of costly materials like mica, crushed pearl and powdered metals.

Born in Paris in 1896, Jacoulet was raised in Tokyo from an early age. His father Frederic Jacoulet was a university professor hired by the Japanese government to teach French to young aristocrats. Paul Jacoulet's art is a unique synthesis of the traditions of the two great artistic cultures of Japan and France. While born in Paris, his family moved to Japan when he was six. It was a time when Japan was still ruled by the Imperial Court and the Emperor revered as a god. Living in an elite neighborhood in Tokyo, he attended fine Japanese private schools, becoming fluent in Japanese, French and English. Jacoulet self published many of his prints and worked with the most skilled woodblock carvers and printers of the day. He spared no expense in using the best quality materials, papers and pigments, including silver and gold, mica and other precious elements.

Thus, his prints have a unique beauty and have survived the passage of time much better than many woodblock prints due to the quality of materials used. His exacting standards caused many prints to be destroyed and his lifetime output is generally thought to be about 166 prints, though he made many thousands of drawings and paintings. Many illustrious people and museums collected his work including General MacArthur, Queen Elizabeth II, Greta Garbo, Pope Pius X1, President Truman, the British Museum and the Asia Pacific Museum. Today, it is widely revered, hard to find, as the editions were relatively small, and highly prized and collected. Paul Jacoulet was born in Paris in 1896.

He moved to Japan with his parents when he was 10 years old. His father Frédéric Jacoulet was a university professor hired by the Japanese government to teach French to young aristocrats. From an early age, Jacoulet showed promise with his intellectual and artistic abilities.

By the time he was 16 years old, he spoke Japanese, French, and English fluently. Isamu Noguchi's mother, who was Jacoulet's neighbor at the time, helped the young artist learn English. He also took dancing lessons and studied gidayu (narrative chanting to the accompaniment of shamisen musical instrument), in which he attained almost professional-level proficiency. Jacoulet set his sights on a career in politics and public service when he accepted his first job with the French embassy in Tokyo.

However, his poor health forced him to resign. In 1921, he began his career as a dedicated full-time artist.

In 1929, Jacoulet created his first prints after undertaking his first trip to the South Sea. Jacoulet's first published prints, which appeared between 1934 and 1935, were 10 works grouped under the title Genre Prints from Around the World. The series comprised portraits of seven Micronesians, one Japanese, one Korean and one French woman, and included his first color print, Young Girl of Saipan and Hibiscus Flowers, Marianas. Further travels inspired more prints with a strong focus on portraits of natives. It wasn't until after World War II that Jacoulet began to stray from popularized pre-war realism into surreal and fantastical subjects.

Jacoulet was a proficient ukiyo-e printmaker. Dating back to the 17th century, ukiyo-e prints feature theatre performers (kabuki), beautiful courtesans, landscapes, and scenes from history and daily life. Jacoulet is also associated with the Shin Hanga (New Print) movement that sought to revitalize Japanese print tradition by introducing Western realism and new subject matter.

It can be reasonably argued that Jacoulet shouldn't be compared to European prototypes. Having spent most of his childhood and adult life in Japan, he was more like his fellow Japanese contemporaries. Jacoulet, like the Japanese artists at the time, modernized their traditional prints by shin-hanga. Jacoulet was also a sosaku-hanga artist, acting as his own publisher and supervising every aspect of the printing process and final print.

In 1931, Jacoulet created the Jacoulet Institute of Prints in order to self-publish his work. Jacoulet was also a superb colorist, exerting direct control over the mixing of the colors and the printing of his designs. Jacoulet used as many as 300 different blocks for a single print. Jacoulet is also known for using hand-made paper and gold, silver, platinum, mother of pearl, mica, and powdered semi-precious stones as additions to the prints. The notch cut in the corner of the paper represents a registration cut for aligning the paper during printing. The verso contains either the print's edition number stamp or the elaborate P. Jacoulet also credited the carvers and printers he worked with by including their names in the margins of the prints.

Jacoulet's commitment to maintaining the integrity of the woodblock print as an art form was demonstrated by his pursuit of perfection. He ensured only high quality work was produced. Therefore, he maintained an active involvement throughout the printing process.

In 1941, Jacoulet moved from Tokyo to Karuizawa during the Second World War where he lived and worked till his death in 1960. Jacoulet was known internationally during and after his life as the Frenchman of the Woodblock Print. He was most productive from 1939 to 1960 when he produced exceptional studies of Japanese nationals in indigenous dress. Beside his art, Jacoulet was known for his unique individuality and personal expression, often dressing in a silk kimono and adorning oshiroi ("honorable white") rice powder make-up and touches of color on his lips.

He is known today for specifically highlighting various sexual orientations and concepts like gender fluidity, which are apparent in some of his work. Jacoulet liked to host lavish parties and invite his guests to see his studio and process. In 1960, Paul Jacoulet died of diabetes at age 58.

Paul Jacoulet produced as many as 166 print designs in addition to an excess of 3,000 watercolors and drawings over the course of his career. Some of Jacoulet's collectors included President Truman, Pope Pius XII, Greta Garbo, and Queen Elizabeth II. A catalog raisonnée of Jacoulet's work titled The Prints of Paul Jacoulet was compiled by Richard Miles and published by Robert G. Jacoulet's work is widely revered but rare because Jacoulet produced editions that were relatively small in number.

In 2011, an exhibition of Paul Jacoulet's oeuvre was held at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris. Jacoulet's work is far more than merely westernized interpretations of the East. His professional success in Japan and his adaptation to Japanese culture and life makes him a highly unique and incomparable figure in twentieth century art history. Paul Jacoulet's work can be found in numerous international collections and major museums including the San Antonio Museum of Art in Texas, Honolulu Museum of Art, Saint Louis Museum of Art, Fine Art Museum of San Francisco, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Yokohama Museum of Art, National Museum of Korea, Tokyo Fuji Art Museum, British Museum, Victoria & Albert Museum, and the Louvre in Paris, among others.

Paul Jacoulet was born in Paris in 1902 (according to some other sources in 1896). He died on March 9, 1960.

Jacoulet came with his mother to Japan in 1906. His father worked at the Tokyo University as a teacher. The young child Paul was of poor health.

But he developed good skills for drawing, music and languages. Paul Jacoulet spoke Japanese, French and English fluently. At the age of eleven he began painting. In 1920, Paul Jacoulet began to work for the French Embassy in Tokyo as an interpreter. Paul had a lively interest in Japanese culture and was a frequent guest in the Noh and Kabuki theaters.

In Paul Gauguin's Footsteps. In 1929 Jacoulet undertook his first trip to the South Sea. Jacoulet made sketches and photographs during his travels. Back at home, he created the print designs from the material collected.

Jacoulet took many of the subjects for his woodblock prints from the South Sea, but also from travels to Korea or Manchuria and from Japan of course. Most of Jacoulet's designs show people - either in groups of two or three or as individual portraits. While his designs of the pre-war period, reflects a certain realism, the post-war woodblock prints show scenes that are a product of fantasy. This depiction of a South Sea world that did not exist any more, later resulted in some harsh remarks from art critics. And criticism was the last that the artist was willing to accept. In 1934, Jacoulet produced his first woodblock print. He worked with professional carvers and printers. The technical requirements on craftsmanship for a Paul Jacoulet print were so high that he could cooperate only with the very best engravers and printers. Jacoulet published most of his prints himself. He tried to sell by a kind of subscription scheme. The number of prints pulled from one design depended on the number of subscriptions he had. Therefore the number of copies taken remained small. Difficult Times during World War II. Times became difficult for foreign artists in pre-war Japan. Westerner left Japan and demand for Japanese art imports from Japan dropped.

There was no place to go and no market for his woodblock prints any more. Jacoulet remained in Japan through the war. The Japanese Frenchman of the Woodblock Print. Jacoulet used some very elaborate techniques for the creation of his prints. This included all the known deluxe features like embossing, lacquers, micas or metal pigments.

And he experimented with new techniques like powdered semi-precious stones. For his prints he used special watermarked papers from Kyoto instead of the normal Japanese washi paper. For some of his prints he bragged to have used as many as 300 hundred blocks. But that seems to be exaggerated - Paul Jacoulet had a reputation for inventing stories!

One of his assistants later remembered that they sometimes used up to 60 blocks - still a lot. The format of Jacoulet prints is usually rather large. The known number of Paul Jacoulet prints is 166.

After World War II the art work of Jacoulet became rapidly famous. Among his admirers and collectors were General Douglas MacArthur, Greta Garbo, Pope Pius XII and Queen Elizabeth II. But some sources say that Jacoulet had simply sent his prints to these celebrities for free as presents and unrequested to promote his sales with a reference list of well-known names. The artist had developed rather extravagant manners after World War II.

He used make-up for his face and powdered his lips. His favorite clothes were kimonos. It does not look so strange for the generation who experienced the revolution of the 1960s with the Beatles and Pop Art. But in post-war Japan occupied by the US forces, this was seen as rather weird. During his last years, his health became worse and worse.

But Jacoulet continued to produce woodblock prints until the time of his death in 1960. He died of diabetes at the age of 58. Jacoulet prints are rare and not quite cheap - a small market niche. Apart from condition, the price depends considerably on the attractiveness of the subject. Some of his works hit record prices in the 1980s. In the new millennium prices seem to have come down for Jacoulet prints. But the cheaper prints are often not in first-rate condition.

In the 1970s and 1980s it was fashionable to decorate one's office or home with prints by this artist. Many of these "consumer prints" are now coming back into the market. Their condition is usually from modest to completely ruined.

We have personally experienced such prints sent to us unrequested. Another aspect that we encountered around 2007 were several prints by Paul Jacoulet not signed and not numbered. We assume that these were from "printer(s) hoards". We have never heard about Paul Jacoulet fakes. In my view it would require too much effort, and the market prices and demand are not attractive enough to encourage fakes.

This item is in the category "Art\Art Prints". The seller is "willsusa_utzeqm" and is located in this country: US. This item can be shipped to United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Denmark, Romania, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Finland, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Estonia, Australia, Greece, Portugal, Cyprus, Slovenia, Japan, China, Sweden, South Korea, Indonesia, Taiwan, South Africa, Belgium, France, Hong Kong, Ireland, Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Italy, Germany, Austria, Bahamas, Israel, Mexico, New Zealand, Singapore, Switzerland, Norway, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, Republic of Croatia, Malaysia, Chile, Colombia, Panama, Jamaica, Barbados, Bangladesh, Bermuda, Brunei Darussalam, Bolivia, Egypt, French Guiana, Guernsey, Gibraltar, Guadeloupe, Iceland, Jersey, Jordan, Cambodia, Cayman Islands, Liechtenstein, Sri Lanka, Luxembourg, Monaco, Macau, Martinique, Maldives, Nicaragua, Oman, Pakistan, Paraguay, Reunion.
  • Artist: Paul Jacoulet
  • Signed By: Paul Jacoulet
  • Image Orientation: Portrait
  • Signed: Yes
  • Size: Medium
  • Title: \
  • Material: Paper
  • Original/Licensed Reprint: Original
  • Framing: Framed
  • Region of Origin: California, USA
  • Subject: Asia, Figures, Women, Portrait, Fashion
  • Type: Print
  • Year of Production: 1941
  • Item Height: 21 3/4 in
  • Theme: Fashion, People, Japan
  • Style: Art Nouveau, Impressionism, Japanese Woodprinting, Modernism, Orientalism
  • Features: Limited Edition
  • Production Technique: Woodblock
  • Country/Region of Manufacture: France
  • Handmade: Yes
  • Item Width: 17 3/4 in
  • Time Period Produced: 1925-1949

RARE Antique French Japanese Orientalist Woodblock Print, Jacoulet Signed