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| Artist: | Tomoe (Shotei Takahashi copy by Watanabe) — ともゑ |
| Title: | River Sumida in snow; house-boat |
| Series: | |
| Date of first edition?: | Not set |
| Publisher (first edition)?: | Watanabe — 渡辺 |
| Publisher (this edition)?: | Watanabe — 渡辺 |
| Medium (first edition): | Woodblock |
| Medium (this edition): | Woodblock |
| Format (first edition): | Postcard
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| Format (this edition): | Postcard |
| DB artwork code: | 35521 |
| Notes (first edition)?: |
| Shotei.com Catalog Number: S-1. This is a restrike of Shotei's scene with a Tomoe artist seal. |
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| Notes (this edition)?: |
| The following information was taken from the original web listing of this artwork. Note that there may be some inaccuracies:
This lovely little print is an original woodblock print by a shin hanga artist, possibly Kawase Hasui or Shotei. These smaller prints are sometimes described as surimono. The impression and color are excellent. The condition is also fine. It bears a seal in the lower right which I do not recognize |
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| Artist Bio: |
Many of the prints signed "Tomoe" are clearly scenes by Takahashi Shotei and were sold by Watanabe from around the 1960s. Unusually, Watanabe Shoichiro, in an email reply to a colleague around 2008, stated that the prints are by Kawase Hasui: see the following email:
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Dear Al,
Thank you very much for your email and enquires.
The artist of the post card sized prints is Kawase Hasui. The seal is sounded "Tomoe (a Whirl)". Tomoe is the meaning of "Ha". On the other hand, "Sui" means "Mizu (Water)".
He sometimes used "Tomoe" as his artist name for some small sized prints, instead of "Hasui".
I hope this information is available for your enquiry.
Sincerely,
Shoichiro Watanabe
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What Shoichiro is suggesting here is that "Tomo" is a reading for Hasui's first kanji "巴", and "e" (in Tomo-e) is a reading for "画" meaning brush-stroke; picture. Thus, Tomoe means "painted by Hasui". My guess here is that Watanabe Tadasu, the second owner of Watanabe Woodblock Prints, decided to sell the postcards as being by the more famous Hasui, rather than by the lesser-known Takahashi Shotei, to increase sales.
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