Yoshio Makino, Buckingham Palace London Seen across Green Park

Yoshio Makino, Buckingham Palace London Seen across Green Park, 1911

 

 

 

 

 

 

Artist– Yoshio Makino (1869-1956)
Title– Buckingham Palace, London, Seen across Green Park
Date– 1911
Medium– Woodblock print; with printed marks and seal
Printer– Nishimura satsu
Gift of Dr Cecilia Segawa Seigle

This print portrays London at dusk, we can see a faint depiction of Buckingham Palace in the background and Green Park with people walking along the footpath that leads from the foreground through the composition towards the palace. During this time Makino was heavily involved with the Suffragette movement and was influenced by the movement taking place within the city. The two women closest to the picture plane are dressed in clothes of the Suffragette movement with their slim determined figures and large hats with slightly shorter and more practical skirts. In Makino’s earlier work he had displayed a keen interest in depicting London during the fog which he has employed here, the palace in the background is just a faint outline. Furthermore, Makino has depicted Buckingham palace from a different angle than would have been traditionally popular. Not only does he approach the palace from the side so the famous façade cannot be seen but he chooses heavy fog and trees as obstacles. This, therefore, takes the emphasis off the architecture and brings it to the figures in the front once again showing his support for the Suffragette movement.

Other versions of this print can be found in the Royal Collection Trust of Great Britain, Victoria and Albert Museum, Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco and Christie’s Auction House.

Selected Reading

  • Blacker, Carmen. “Yoshio Markino.” Collected Writings of Carmen Blacker (Collected Writings of Modern Western Scholars on Japan), 1st ed., Routledge, 2016, pp. 248–55.
  • William S. Rodner, and John T. Carpenter. “A Mirror of Unknown Genre.” Edwardian London Through Japanese Eyes: The Art and Writings of Yoshio Markino, 1897-1915, BRILL, 2011, pp. 93–95, ebookcentral-proquest-com.proxy.library.upenn.edu/lib/upenn-ebooks/detail.action?docID=1158498.

Posted by Katarina de Gentile-Williams

October 28, 2020