Tiger - Toshi Yoshida

Artist: Tōshi Yoshida (1911–1995)

Title: Tiger

Design Date: 1987

Medium: Genuine Japanese color woodblock print

Format: Vertical format

Paper Size: Approximately 11.5 × 8.75 inches

This genuine Japanese color woodblock print is Tōshi Yoshida’s Tiger, created in 1987.

Tiger presents the animal head-on, crouched low with its enormous front paws extended toward the viewer. Yoshida removes nearly all background detail, concentrating attention on the tiger’s powerful form, striped coat, and intense yellow eyes. Fine black linework creates the texture of the fur, while the restrained orange, gray, and black palette gives the image an almost illustrative quality. The direct gaze and compressed pose create a striking combination of stillness and tension, capturing the tiger at a moment that feels both calm and potentially explosive.

Inscriptions & Marks:

• Title: Tiger, block-printed in English in the lower left margin
• Artist: Tōshi Yoshida
• Signature: “Toshi Yoshida,” pencil signed in English in the lower right margin
• Artist seal: Red Yoshida seal within the image at lower right
• Design Date: 1987

Condition: Very Good. Light overall toning consistent with age, with slightly more pronounced toning along the margins. Minor handling wear and faint scattered surface marks. A few light horizontal creases or pressure marks are visible around the tiger’s face and whiskers. Colors remain strong, with vivid yellow eyes and good definition throughout the fine black linework. Full margins. Please review the photographs carefully, as they form part of the condition description.

About the Artist: Tōshi Yoshida (1911–1995) was one of the most important Japanese woodblock artists of the twentieth century and the eldest son of renowned shin-hanga master Hiroshi Yoshida. Raised within the Yoshida family studio, he learned drawing, painting, carving, and traditional woodblock printing from an early age. Although his early work naturally reflected his father’s influence, Tōshi went on to develop a remarkably varied and independent career that included landscapes, city scenes, abstract compositions, and wildlife. His animal prints became an especially important part of his later work, combining close observation with the precision and craftsmanship of traditional Japanese woodblock printing.

About the Print: Tiger belongs to the later period of Tōshi Yoshida’s career, when animals had become one of his most recognizable subjects. Yoshida had a lifelong interest in wildlife and traveled extensively, producing prints of animals ranging from birds and domestic cats to lions, leopards, and other large mammals. In these later works, he often stripped away elaborate settings to concentrate on the character and physical presence of the animal itself. Tiger is a particularly direct example of this approach: the empty background and frontal composition leave almost nothing between the viewer and the animal’s penetrating gaze.