Golden Lion

Golden Lion most likely refers to a shishi or karajishi, the Chinese-derived guardian lion that recurs across Japanese painting, lacquerwork and woodblock printing — a creature that is decorative rather than zoologically observed, often shown with stylised manes and curling tails. Aquatint is a less conventional medium for the subject than woodblock or ink painting, and Aida's choice of intaglio shifts the lion away from the sharp linearity associated with Edo-period treatments toward a softer tonal envelope. Through staged biting of the rosin-grounded plate, the print can hold the dense black of the mane against the lighter golden body, with à la poupée or surface-rolled colour potentially picking out the warm hue named in the title. The print sits within Aida's broader animal subject matter, alongside her birds, fish and insects, and reflects her recurring negotiation between a Japanese pictorial vocabulary inherited from her training at Tokyo Geijutsu Daigaku and the European intaglio tradition she pursued at the Royal College of Art. As with her Jakuchu's Rooster, the work reads less as direct citation of a classical source than as a personal reworking through tonal etching.