Seagulls

Medium:: Woodblock print
Source:: Japanese Art Open Database

Typical Price

Key value factors: As self-carved and self-printed works, sosaku-hanga value is tied to the artist's reputation and edition size. Larger formats, earlier editions, and historically significant works command the highest prices.

Common examples: $100–$500
Good impressions: $500–$2,000
Premium/scarce: $2,000–$10,000

Description

A seagull composition by Aoyama Masaharu — the sea birds of Japan's coastline rendered with the ornithological precision and compositional confidence that characterize his bird subjects generally. Seagulls (kamome) in Japanese art carry associations with the open sea, with coastal life, and with the particular quality of sea light and movement. Aoyama's training in traditional Japanese bird painting gave him the classical vocabulary for rendering birds in flight — the complex foreshortening of spread wings, the relationship between the bird and the air that supports it — while his sosaku-hanga sensibility brought a modern directness to what might otherwise have been conventionally decorative compositions.