Lyric landscapes, Geishas, and dramatic theater scenes—a bright and ephemeral world is shown on these valuable Japanese wood prints, which came to the collection of the Städtische Museen Freiburg one hundred years ago. That these rare examples of high quality came to the museum is the merit of Ernst Grosse, ethnologist and director of the Städtische Kunstsammlungen at that time. Because of his connection with the Japanese art dealer Tadamsa Hayashi, he was able to build an extraordinary collection of Japanese artworks. This catalog for the exhibition in the Haus der Graphischen Sammlung Freiburg presents approximately sixty works, some of them prints by Hokusai and Hiroshige, newly interpreted by the East Asian specialist Hans Bjarne Thomsen from Zürich.
