小原古邨 · 祥邨 · 花鳥版画
signing as Shōson (1877–1945) · master of shin-hanga kachō-e
Published by Watanabe Shōzaburō · a fine pre-war impression
| Artist | Ohara Koson (小原古邨), signing as Shōson (祥邨), 1877–1945 |
| Subject | Two geese swimming among reeds — kachō-e (bird-and-flower print) |
| Publisher | Watanabe Shōzaburō (渡邊庄三郎) — S. Watanabe Color Print Co. |
| Date | Design of the late 1920s; this a pre-war impression, c. 1931–1941 |
| Technique | Woodblock print (mokuhanga), shin-hanga — with bokashi gradation and blind-embossed (karazuri) plumage |
| Format | Ōban yoko-e — 25.5 × 38.8 cm (10 × 15¼ in.) |
| Marks | "Made in Japan" stamped on the verso |
IMPRESSION & COLOURS
Excellent. A crisp, fresh impression with luminous, well-preserved colour and clean bokashi across the water; the feathers are finely blind-embossed and read beautifully in raking light.
PAPER
Excellent. Firm, clean washi with full deckle edges. A genuine pre-war Watanabe printing, "Made in Japan" stamped on the reverse.
Two white geese glide on still water beneath a fringe of overhanging reeds. One stretches its neck low across the surface, bill parted as if calling; its companion drifts serenely abreast, and their pale reflections dissolve into the rippled blue below. The palette is reduced almost to silence — cool slate-blue water, cream plumage, two notes of persimmon at the bills and feet, and the black calligraphic strokes of the reeds above. It is composition by omission: a wide, breathing expanse of empty water that lets the birds carry the whole sheet.
This is kachō-e at the height of the genre. Koson observes his birds with a naturalist's exactness — the set of the necks, the webbed feet trailing beneath the surface — yet resolves them with the decorative economy of the Japanese painting tradition. The plumage is blind-embossed into the paper without ink, so that each feather catches the light in low relief; the water is graded by hand, block by block, in the soft bokashi wash for which the Watanabe workshop was unrivalled. Printing of this calibre, on this paper, was reserved for the pre-war editions.
Ohara Koson (1877–1945) is the supreme bird-and-flower designer of the shin-hanga ("new print") movement. Trained in the Shijō tradition of nature painting, he joined the great publisher Watanabe Shōzaburō in the mid-1920s — signing this Watanabe work Shōson — and produced for him a celebrated body of kachō-e that found an enthusiastic following in the West. Long under-appreciated after his death, his prints were rediscovered from the 1970s and were the subject of a major retrospective at the Minneapolis Institute of Art; his work is now held in the British Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Rijksmuseum and major collections worldwide.
One of the most quietly arresting of Koson's waterfowl subjects, in a fine pre-war Watanabe impression with fine embossing and fresh colour — an exemplary piece of twentieth-century kachō-e.
Shipping: Shipped flat, protected between acid-free tissue and rigid boards, by tracked and insured international post. Ships from Germany.
Guarantee: Original Japanese woodblock print. Guaranteed authentic. Full refund if not as described.