Moonlight Night- Oban
by Kaoru Kawano
- Medium:
- Woodblock print
- Format:
- Oban
- Edition:
- Self-printed
- Source:
- Japanese Art Open Database
by Kaoru Kawano
$500–$4,000. Snow and night scenes tend to command premium prices for this artist. Key value factors: Kawano's early death at 49 limits her output. Her dreamlike figure prints are most sought after.
The [oban](/glossary/oban)-format Moonlight Night gives Kawano's nocturnal subject its most expansive treatment, the large sheet accommodating the full sweep of a night landscape or the luminous isolation of a figure under moonlight. Japanese aesthetic tradition had long associated moonlight with both beauty and melancholy — the moon's reflection in water, its cold light on stone, its transforming effect on familiar scenes — and Kawano worked within this tradition while bringing his own bold graphic sensibility to bear on it.
![Mount Fuji on a Moonlit Night, Kawai Bridge (Tsukiyo no Fuji [Kawaibashi]), from the series "Selection of Views of the Tokaido (Tokaido fukei senshu)" by Kawase Hasui](https://www.artic.edu/iiif/2/d0960668-1e73-339a-b182-fb995a54bff0/full/843,/0/default.jpg)
1947
Color woodblock print; oban
March 1933
Color woodblock print; oban
1919
Color woodblock print
January 1938
Woodblock print, ink and color on paper
Curated cross-cuts that include this print.
Moonlight Night- Oban was created by Kaoru Kawano (川野薫).
Moonlight Night- Oban depicts moonlight and night scenes.
