Snowstorm
by Ito Shinsui
- Date:
- c.1940
- Medium:
- Woodblock print, ink and color on paper
- Format:
- Oban
- Dimensions:
- 41.6 × 25.7 cm
- Publisher:
- Watanabe Shozaburo
- Edition:
- Published by Watanabe Shozaburo
- Source:
- Minneapolis Institute of Art
Description
A snowstorm—more violent and dramatic than the quiet snowfall scenes that dominate Shinsui's winter bijin-ga—fills this circa-1940 landscape with driven, diagonal precipitation and the flattened visibility of a true blizzard. The bokashi gradations build the compressed atmospheric depth of a snowstorm, where the horizon disappears and the world reduces to immediate foreground against white obscurity. The work's date, circa 1940, places it at the beginning of Japan's most intense wartime period, and the storm's erasure of landscape may carry unintended historical resonance.
More Prints by Ito Shinsui
More Snow Scenes Prints
Fair Weather After Snow at Yamato Bridge, Kyoto (Yamato bashi no yukibare), Taishô period, dated 1924
Woodblock print
The Compound of the Tenman Shrine at Kameido in the Snow (Kameido Tenmangu keidai no yuki), from the series "Famous Places in the Eastern Capital (Toto meisho)"
c. 1832/38
Color woodblock print; oban
Miyajima in Snow (Yuki no Miyajima)
Yuki no Miyajima
1929
Color woodblock print; oban
Evening Snow at Shiha Park, Tokyo
1932
Woodblock print
Featured in Collections
Curated cross-cuts that include this print.
Frequently Asked Questions
Snowstorm was created by Ito Shinsui (伊東深水) in c.1940.
Snowstorm uses Bokashi, on woodblock print, ink and color on paper.
Snowstorm was published by Watanabe Shozaburo (c.1940).
Snowstorm depicts snow scenes.
Snowstorm measures 41.6 × 25.7 cm (Oban format).