In Spring

One of Shinsui's earliest surviving works, this 1912 spring landscape was produced when he was approximately fourteen years old, making it among the most precocious examples of professional landscape work by a young artist in the shin-hanga canon. The composition—a spring scene using the delicate color palette and bokashi printing that would define his mature work—already shows a sensitivity to atmospheric light and seasonal mood that belies the artist's age. The print documents the very beginning of a sixty-year career.