Tree peonies

This second Tree peonies composition reflects Yamaguchi's habit of returning repeatedly to the same subject across different blocks and color schemes, treating the motif as a structural problem rather than a fixed image. The peony, traditionally rendered in nishiki-e with fine outline and graded petal washes, here would be reorganized into a small number of large interlocking shapes — a few rounded blossom-forms, a darker counterweight of leaves, and a contrasting field that occupies most of the sheet. Yamaguchi's signature use of textured grounds, sometimes embossed by paper-soaked baren pressure on rough wood, gives each version its own surface life even when the underlying drawing is similar. By varying color and texture across multiple Tree peonies prints, he extended the sosaku-hanga principle that the print itself, made entirely by the artist's hand, is the work — not a reproduction of a prior design.