Egrets in the Reeds

Egrets in the Reeds, designed by Isoda Koryusai in 1769, is a kacho-ga that places the long-legged white egret (shirasagi) among tall reed grasses at a marsh or river edge. The bird, with its slender curved neck and yellow feet, has long been associated in Japanese painting with the purity of waterside landscapes and with the kanji-laden poetic vocabulary of late autumn. Koryusai approaches the subject in a manner that draws on Kano and Tosa precedents for bird painting, refined through his apprenticeship and early adult exposure to ukiyo-e workshops, and translates them into the disciplined polychrome of the nishiki-e print. The composition is built on the contrast between the soft white plumage of the egret, picked out in karazuri blind printing over reserve paper, and the dark keyblock outlines of the reed stalks rising vertically through the sheet. Koryusai's bird-and-flower designs sit in parallel with his prolific output of Edo bijin-ga and courtesan portraits, and they demonstrate the breadth of his repertoire in the years leading up to the Hinagata Wakana no Hatsumoyo series; together, these subject categories defined his standing alongside Kitao Shigemasa as one of the most versatile designers of the Meiwa and early An'ei periods. The Art Institute of Chicago impression (object 21192) is a chuban nishiki-e in restrained greens, soft greys, and a near-black accent for the egret's bill and eye, the kind of disciplined tonal palette that distinguished Koryusai's mature bird studies. As a quiet exercise in formal contrast, Egrets in the Reeds is a fine example of his bird-and-flower mode at the end of the 1760s. Source: Art Institute of Chicago, https://www.artic.edu/artworks/21192.