Puppies in the Snow

Isoda Koryusai's Puppies in the Snow, dated 1768 and held at the Art Institute of Chicago, is one of the artist's most engaging animal subjects, a small winter idyll that documents his gift for empathetic observation of non-human life. Two puppies tumble across a snow-covered ground, their soft, round forms set against the cool pallor of winter. Koryusai distinguishes the pair through subtle variations in posture and coloration, so that each puppy reads as an individual character rather than a generic motif. Snow scenes and animal genre prints were both well-established subgenres in mid-Meiwa Edo ukiyo-e, and combining the two allowed Koryusai to indulge his evident fondness for studied playful gesture. The composition stays simple: a low horizon, a generously empty foreground, and the two animals placed slightly off-center so that the snow itself becomes a major compositional element. Even within the relatively restrained palette of late-1760s nishiki-e, Koryusai achieves a tender warmth in the rendering of fur and the soft outlines of the bodies. Throughout his career, Koryusai treated animals — gibbons, lions, monkeys, phoenixes, dogs — as worthy subjects in their own right, parallel to the courtesan world that culminated in Hinagata Wakana no Hatsumoyo. Puppies in the Snow can be read as a small but exact sample of his observational range, and as evidence of how Edo bijin-ga sat alongside, rather than overshadowed, a robust visual culture of animal and seasonal imagery. The print's surviving impression in Chicago preserves a charming and quietly virtuosic moment in his catalog.