Showa Animal Prints

Ohara Koson, 'Rabbits and the Moon', color woodblock, 'oban tate-e', 1931. Signed 'Shoson' with the 'Shoson' red seal, lower left. A very fine impression, with pronounced woodgrain ...

Rooster and Hen Color woodcut, 1900-1910 Signed lower right (see photo) Signed with the artist's dark red seal, lower right (see photo) Condition: Exce...

Chicken and Rooster Color woodcut with embossing, 1914-1915 Signed: Kiyochika (see photo_ Seal: Artist's red signature seal (See photo) Publisher: Watanabe (see photo) Format: Oban Condition: Excellent Image size: 11 3/8 x 15 5/8 inches Provenance: Robert O. Muller Collection (1911-2003), famous collector and dealer From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Kobayashi Kiyochika 小林清親 Born Kobayashi Katsunosuke 10 September 1847 Edo, Japan Died 28 November 1915 (aged 68) Tokyo, Japan Nationality Japanese Movement ukiyo-e Kobayashi Kiyochika (小林 清親, 10 September 1847 – 28 November 1915) was a Japanese ukiyo-e artist, best known for his colour woodblock prints and newspaper illustrations. His work documents the rapid modernization and Westernization Japan underwent during the Meiji period (1868–1912) and employs a sense of light and shade called kōsen-ga [ja] inspired by Western art techniques. His work first found an audience in the 1870s with prints of red-brick buildings and trains that had proliferated after the Meiji Restoration; his prints of the First Sino-Japanese War of 1894–95 were also popular. Woodblock printing fell out of favour during this period, and many collectors[who?] consider Kobayashi's work the last significant example of ukiyo-e. Life and career Kiyochika was born Kobayashi Katsunosuke (小林 勝之助) on 10 September 1847 (the first day of the eighth month of the ninth year of Kōka on the Japanese calendar) in Kurayashiki [ja] neighbourhood of Honjo in Edo (modern Tokyo). His father was Kobayashi Mohē (茂兵衛), who worked as a minor official in charge of unloading rice collected as taxes. His mother Chikako (知加子) was the daughter of another such official, Matsui Yasunosuke (松井安之助). The 1855 Edo earthquake destroyed the family home but left the family unharmed. Though the youngest of his parents' nine children, Kiyochika took over as head of the household upon his father's death in 1862 and changed his name from Katsunosuke. As a subordinate to a kanjō-bugyō official Kiyochika travelled to Kyoto in 1865 with Tokugawa Iemochi's retinue, the first shogunal visit to Kyoto in over two centuries. They continued to Osaka, where Kiyochika thereafter made his home. During the Boshin War in 1868 Kiyochika participated on the side of the shōgun in the Battle of Toba–Fushimi in Kyoto and returned to Osaka after defeat of the shōgun's forces. He returned by land to Edo and re-entered the employ of the shōgun. After the fall of Edo he relocated to Shizuoka, the heartland of the Tokugawa clan, where he stayed for the next several years. Kiyochika returned to the renamed Tokyo in May 1873 with his mother, who died there that September. He began to concentrate on art and associated with such artists as Shibata Zeshin...

Nishiyama Suisho, 'Cat (Neko)', color woodblock print, 1921. Signed 'Suisho' with the artist’s red seal beneath. A fine impression, with fresh, undiminished colors, with metallic gol...

Ohara Koson, 'Cockatoo on Pomegranate', color woodblock print, 1927. Signed 'Shoson' with the artist's, red seal 'Shoson'. A fine, life-time impression, with fresh colors—deep black...

Tea Flowers and Daurian Redstarts (Winter) (Cha no hana ni hitaki fuyu). Two native redstarts with beautiful orange plumage perch on white tea flowers. The bird on the left is the ma...

Tit on the Stalk of a Flowering Magnolia. c. 1921. Otanzaku: 13 3/16 6 x 7 3/13 (sheet 14 7/16 x 7 5/16 ). Publisher: Daikoku-ya (Tokyo publisher, 1818-1923). Illustrated: Crows, Cranes & Camellias K29.11, page 183. Signed and sealed Koson. A fine impression with subtle shading and fresh colors. Housed in a 20 x 16-inch archival mat. Koson Ohara...

Sparrow on Hortensia. after 1921. Otanzaku: 13 3/8 x 7 3/16 (sheet 14 5/16 x 7 7/16). Publisher:: Daikoku-ya (Tokyo publisher, 1818-1923) Illustrated: Crows, Cranes & Camellias K33.13, pages 75 and 183. Signed and sealed Shoson. Stamped on the back: "made in Japan" indicating that the print was made for export to the United States. Housed in a 20 x 16-inch archival mat. The image shows a charming tree sparrow as it settles on a branch of flowering blue-white hortensia. Housed in a 20 x 16-inch archival mat. Koson Ohara...

Carrion Crow on a Snow-covered Branch at Dawn. c. 1930. Otanzaku: 14 9/16 x 6 5/8 (sheet 14 15/16 x 6 3/4). Publisher: Watanabe Shozaburo. Illustrated: Crows, Cranes & Camellias S5.5. Signed and sealed Shoson. Housed in a 20 x 16-inch archival mat. Koson Ohara...

Idyllic landscape wood block print by Toshi Yoshida (Japanese 1911-1995). Depicts a savanna style landscape with ostriches beneath a dramatic sky titled ...

Three white eye birds, their backs green and their breasts a soft yellow, perch on a laden persimmon bough. It must be the season of late autumn or winter, the time when persimmon fr...

An orange-and black flycatcher has perched on a rose mallow branch. The bird watches a spider descending on its filament with great interest. With the Watanabe seal that was in use d...