Miller, Lilian (1895 - 1943 )
Born in Tokyo to an American diplomat, Lilian Miller was a prominent woodblock print artist, as well as a painter and poet during the first half of the 20th century. At the suggestion of artist Helen Hyde, Miller began her formal artistic training at age 9 with Tomonobu Kano, the head of the Kano school at that time. Her second teacher, Bokusen Shimada, gave her the go, or artist name, Gyokka. At age 14, Miller’s father became head of the State Department’s Far East Department and the family moved to the United States. Miller returned to East Asia following her graduation from Vassar College in 1917. After brief stay in Seoul, she moved back to Japan in 1920. Miller began selling her woodblock prints, working with prominent carver Matsumoto and the printer Kumakichi Nishimura.
Shin Hanga | Pre-WWII Japanese Prints
By the beginning of the 20th century the social fabric of Japan was radically altered and ukiyo-e was falling fast into oblivion. Surprisingly, it was under the stimulus of the Western art world that the spirit of ukiyo-e was reborn through the Shin Hanga or “new print” movement. The discovery of the powerful impact of ukiyo-e print masters on the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists inspired a new generation of Japanese print artists who revived distinctly Japanese subject matter through modern eyes. International excitement for ukiyo-e paved the way for these artists to create woodblock prints with the same dignity, perfection and genius as the masters of the Edo period. As artists such as Goyo, Kotondo and Shinsui revived bijin-ga (pictures of beautiful women) and Hasui and Yoshida reinterpreted the landscape of Japan, Shin Hanga reasserted the principal genres of ukiyo-e with a renewed vigor. Browse our collection of Shin Hanga and other pre-war Japanese artworks today.
1 Product
