Spirit of the Heron (Shirasagi no sei), Taishō period

Spirit of the Heron (Shirasagi no sei, 白鷺の精), Taishō period, is a second impression by Taniguchi Kōkyō in the Harvard Art Museums (HUAM-CARP09946), catalogued as Taishō-period and dated to approximately 1918 — three years after Kōkyō's death in November 1915, meaning that this impression was almost certainly pulled from Kōkyō's blocks during the early Taishō posthumous editioning that several Kyoto publishers undertook to keep his most popular print subjects in circulation. The composition is a variant of the same Sagi musume (Heron Maiden) subject Kōkyō treated in multiple late prints, with the white-robed heron-spirit set against a largely empty ground, the kimono rendered in graduated white-on-white bokashi, the hair and facial features in fine line, and the kind of restrained gauffrage and color accents characteristic of Kyoto figure prints of the period. The print exemplifies the way major Kyoto nihonga painters of Kōkyō's generation participated in the late-Meiji and Taishō revival of the deluxe color woodblock as a vehicle for figure subjects drawn from kabuki, Noh, and classical literature. The Harvard print supports comparison with the Art Institute of Chicago's impression of the related composition and with the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston's Heron Girl, and helps document the print's continued circulation in the years immediately after the artist's death.