NEW YORK, NY.- Scholten Japanese Art announced their gallery presentation, STERLING: 25 Years in New York, celebrating our ‘silver’ anniversary during Asia Week New York 2026. Having passed the quarter-century mark, we assembled this exhibition mindful of our own history as we look back on our previous 90 exhibitions and 9 publications, with at least 7,000 works sold to over 50 museums and countless thousands of collectors, while also contemplating the direction of future possibilities. The exhibition will present a selection of works reflecting our continuing commitment to exploring the intertwining development of Japanese woodblock prints from the early to mid-20th century by artists who designed shin-hanga (lit. ‘new prints’) and sosaku hanga (lit. ‘creative prints’), while expanding our collective understanding of the art and artists who contributed to this field. The prints on offer will be supplemented by several paintings related to the design and/or aesthetics of the period, with a fresh look at new artists and related genres. Important and coveted works by highly sought-after artists will be juxtaposed with intriguing finds by little-known or unknown contemporaries. The timeline will begin at the turn of the 20th century and include the creative blast of the post-war period.

In keeping with the silver theme, there will be several woodblock prints which are enhanced with sparkling mica—an expensive embellishment using the finely ground mineral which had been popular in the late 18th and early 19th century, but the application technique had been largely forgotten by the turn of the 20th century. The lost art of mica printing returned to use principally due to the efforts of the influential artist Hashiguchi Goyo (1880–1921), as is found on two works by the artist, both dated 1920, included in the exhibition. Goyo was the first established Japanese artist (who was not a printmaker at the time) to venture into the nascent genre being developed by the visionary publisher Watanabe Shozaburo (1885–1962) in the mid-1910s. Watanabe wanted to create modern prints that utilized Japanese printing techniques featuring Western influences. After producing just one print together, Goyo chose to establish his own studio to explore printmaking independently in a manner that reflected his personal interest in ‘golden age’ ukiyo-e of the late 18th century, which frequently utilized mica backgrounds on portraits of beauties by artists such as Kitagawa Utamaro or kabuki actors by the enigmatic Sharaku. All of Goyo’s self-published figural prints feature light silver or white mica backgrounds (sometimes under printed with pale colors), such as the pristine impression included in the exhibition, Woman in a Long Undergarment, shimmering with white mica applied over a pale pink background. In contrast, Goyo’s Woman Holding a Tray is the only design by Goyo which utilizes a dramatic dark grey mica background in the style of Sharaku’s actor portraits.

Perhaps surprisingly, the first artist Watanabe collaborated with on his new style of printmaking was a foreigner, Friedrich ‘Fritz’ Capelari (1884–1950) who had been living in Asia since 1910. Watanabe had been looking for an artist who was trained in Western-style painting but was initially turned down by professional Japanese artists who were reluctant to get involved with Watanabe’s experiment with ukiyo-e style commercial printing. Woodblock printing under the direction of a publisher was regarded as old-fashioned and contrary to the modern emphasis on the artist as the sole creator of their work. Watanabe met Capelari when the artist visited his shop and recruited him to design prints. Foreigners in Japan would have been less burdened by the commercial implications of Watanabe's vision and had little to risk by participating in his experiment. Capelari harbored no reservations about having his designs adapted to a woodblock print format and within one year they completed twelve designs, including Woman with Pekingese, 1915, the second print they produced. These prints are often regarded as the first shin-hanga, and as such, highly sought-after by collectors and institutions seeking to represent the full history and development of the genre. For example, we featured a detail of an impression of this print on the cover of our 2008 exhibition catalogue, Highlights of Japanese Printmaking Part Three: The International Perspective. Indeed, Watanabe used the Capelari prints to convince Goyo to work with him on another design.

Having produced the Capelari prints and another with Goyo, Watanabe broadened his search and in 1916 discovered a painting by a young artist, Ito Shinsui (1898–1972) in an exhibition and offered to publish it. The resulting print was a success and quickly sold-out, leading to one more print in 1916 and thirteen prints published the following year. One of the most important works in the exhibition is an early Shinsui print from 1917, Passing Rain. There are two known variants of this print, one in which she holds a brown umbrella, and this version with a blue umbrella. Both are exceedingly scarce, but this version appears to be the more so. In our twenty-five years handling the work of Shinsui (including our 2002 single-artist exhibition, Modern Landscapes, Modern Beauties: The Woodblock Prints of Ito Shinsui), this is first time we have been fortunate enough to (finally) handle this beauty, which we are proud to present and will be reluctant to let go!

We will also offer another one of our ‘cover girls’ by Shinsui, Twelve Images of Modern Beauties: Cotton Kimono from 1922, a detail of which is featured on the cover of our 2006 catalogue, Highlights of Japanese Printmaking Part Two: Shin Hanga. Although Shinsui is often associated with bijinga (images of beautiful women), in those first years of designing prints with Watanabe he also produced several atmospheric landscape prints. The exhibition will feature five examples from his 1917 series, Eight Views of Omi (Omi Hakkei), which are well-known to have inspired a young artist named Kawase Hasui (1883-1957) to approach Watanabe with a portfolio of designs in hopes that he too could become a print designer. Indeed, Shinsui’s Ishiyamadera from 1917 may have been a source of inspiration for Hasui’sKozu, Osaka from 1924; both prints will be included in the exhibition.

One of the more remarkable developments in our field that we have witnessed is the extraordinary rise in popularity of shin-hanga in general, and the work of Hasui in particular. We would like to think collective efforts (along with our contemporaries in the field) in the form of encouragement and support for research, exhibitions and publications played some small role in this, but ultimately, it is not that difficult to understand why people gravitate towards beautiful art. In this new world order of appreciation, certain prints have become exponentially more appreciated than they had in the past. While the famous 1925 print Shiba Zojo Temple (also known as Snow at Zojoji, of which we have handled several impressions over the years) has risen dramatically in value, there is another, arguably more subtle, snow scene that was perhaps somewhat overlooked in the past but has recently become intensely sought-after: Tennoji Temple in Osaka from 1927. The impression of this print which will be in the exhibition has an interesting combination of publisher seals which suggests an early printing, and more importantly, noticeably effective saturation of the shadows which collectors value most with this design.

Another artist with whom we feel a strong affinity is the great and influential Yoshida Hiroshi (1876–1950). As one of the major producers of shin-hanga landscape prints we frequently handled his work and included it in our various exhibitions. Then in 2017 we were fortunate to handle the private sale of an excellent collection of 250 Yoshida woodblock prints to a single buyer, which represented nearly the entirety of the artist’s published works. This extraordinary transaction was an exciting, albeit quiet, fulfillment for the gallery—our only regret is that we were unable to put on an exhibition of the works (which would have required at least 5 rotations due to the volume of prints). We were incredibly fortunate to handle so many prints, including variant impressions. We also found ourselves seeking out Hiroshi’s paintings, as Hiroshi was an extraordinary painter who nimbly worked in watercolor, oil on canvas, as well as traditional Japanese painting techniques, before he designed prints. This culminated in 2024 with the exhibition, Collecting the Master: The Binnie Collection of Hiroshi Yoshida Paintings. Over the years we have delved deeply into Hiroshi’s story and come to appreciate the extraordinary role of his wife Fujio (1887–1987) and her skill as a painter and later in life, printmaker. As such, we are particularly excited to present in the exhibition a very rare Fujio watercolor which we have been saving for this occasion, as well as an equally rare example of one of her earliest prints.

While we have always offered the work of Hiroshi and Fujio’s first son Toshi (1911–1995), in the early 2020s we forged a relationship with the family, which has allowed us to present special exhibitions of Yoshida family abstracts starting in 2022 featuring the (sometimes monumental) work of their second son, Hodaka (1926–1995), along with his dynamic and talented wife, Chizuko (1924–2017). Both were sosaku hanga artists who self-carved and self-printed their works and who influenced both Fujio and Toshi to experiment with abstraction and self-carving as well. Recent museum shows have fueled the fire for work by Yoshida family artists, and our exhibition timeline will close with important abstracts produced during a burst of creativity in the early post-war period.

Looking back on past exhibitions, we marked two of our milestone years with special presentations. In 2010 we celebrated our ten-year anniversary with a two-part show of 20th-century prints and paintings (simply titled ‘20/10’) which at that time proved to be one of our most successful exhibitions to date. We followed up five years later with the ‘20/15’ show revisiting that theme with a selection of works by a greater variety of artists and formats. Most of the artists represented in the 20/10 and 20/15 exhibitions will make a reappearance here either with prints and/or paintings:, including other popular artists associated with shin-hanga such as Takahashi Hiroaki (Shotei, 1871–1945), Ohara Koson (Shoson, 1877–1945), Hirano Hakuho (1879–1957), Kitano Tsunetomi (1880–1947), Yamamura Koka (Toyonari, 1885–1942), Watanabe Ikuharu (1895–1975), Kobayakawa Kiyoshi (1896–1948), Yamakawa Shuho (1898–1944), and Torii Kotondo (1900–1976). There will also be works by additional artists aligned with the sosaku hanga ethos of self-carving and self-printing their works, such as Kishio Koizumi (1893–1945), artists that were active in both modes, such as Oda Kazuma (1881–1956), and works by unfamiliar artists that are worthy of consideration in this milieu. And although we just launched and nearly sold-out a special private collection of Natori Shunsen (1886–1960) kabuki actor prints in December 2025, we saved a few of the most compelling designs by this artist for this exhibition.

Scholten Japanese Art is located at 145 West 58th Street, Suite 6D, between 6th and 7th Avenues. For the duration of the exhibition, March 19 – 27, the gallery will be open with appointments appreciated, 11 – 5 pm; otherwise by appointment through April 3rd.