Gallery 9G: Postcard Prints by Hasegawa Sadanobu III (Konobu III)

This gallery primarily includes works by Hasegawa Sadanobu III but possibly others from the Hasagawa family line. The occasional question of artist attribution is due to the overlapping artistic careers within the family as well as the recurrent use of the Sadanobu and Konobu names. Sadanobu I (1809-1879) was the first artist in the line. Sadanobu II (1848-1940) used the artist name Konobu (Konobu 1) until the death of his father at which time he took on the Sadanobu name. His younger brother produced some prints which were also signed Konobu and is considered to be Konobu II; he never had the opportunity to inherit the Sadanobu name due to his early death in 1886 at age 20. Sadanobu III (1881-`1963), the son of Sadanobu II (Konobu I), also used the name Konobu (III) up until his father’s death in 1940. The naming tradition continued with Sadanobu IV (Konobu IV)(1914-1999) and Sadanobu V (Konobu IV)(b. 1946) who used Konobu until ascending to the Sadanobu name in 2003. Confounding the situation further, is a lack of consensus of the above historical naming sequence in the literature.

The woodblock printed postcards in this section are from a collection of historical postcard Commemorating the 2600th anniversary of the founding of Japan. The set was produced for a postcard exchange group in Kyoto. Although a majority of the postcards have seals and signatures of Hasegawa Sadanobu III, some works (eg. The image of Toyotomi Hideyoshi) are indicated in the accompanying text as having been designed by his father, Sadanobu II, who passed away at the age of 93 in 1940, the year this set was published. It is possible that some additional cards may have been produced by other artists, although the description appears to credit only the Hasegawa family.. Both Sadanubu II and III used multiple seals and signatures, at times without indicating which generation is being represented.. For identification below, it is assumed that most Konobu signatures likely indicate Sadanubu III as Sadanobu II would likely be signing Sadanobu. However, identifications below should be considered tentative until more extensively studied. This set was distributed in an accordion book with slots to hold the postcards. Additional postcards were composed of text describing historical periods, maps, or introduced new stamps designed for the occasion. Only the postcards with artwork are included here. Translations are provided when possible based on the summaries provided with the set. Unfortunately, the description for the postcards in the first half of the set was missing when it was acquired.