from the series One Hundred Pictures by Kyôsai (Kyôsai hyakuzu)
- Series:
- One Hundred Pictures by Kyôsai
- Medium:
- Woodblock print
- Source:
- Museum of Fine Arts Boston
- Image courtesy of
- Museum of Fine Arts Boston
Description
A print from the Kyôsai hyakuzu, this sheet likely presents a dragon — one of the subjects Kyosai treated with particular intensity throughout his career. His dragon compositions draw on Chinese ink-painting conventions, filtered through Kanō school intermediaries, and are characterized by the coiling dynamism of the body set against swirling cloud or wave formations. The scale of even a single oban sheet limits how much of the dragon's full extent can appear, so Kyosai typically focuses on the head and upper body, the claws, and the first coil of the tail, allowing the rest to recede into cloud. The key block cutting would need to reproduce the complex overlapping of scales, rendered in the original brushwork with rapid parallel strokes, and color blocks would supply the greens, blues, or grays typical of aquatic dragon imagery. Within the Hyakuzu, dragon prints anchor the more overtly auspicious end of the series' tonal range.
More Prints by Kawanabe Kyosai
from the series One Hundred Pictures by Kyôsai (Kyôsai hyakuzu)
Woodblock print
Old Picture of the Rashômon Gate (Rashômon no ko zu), from the series Scenes of Famous Places along the Tôkaidô Road (Tôkaidô meisho fûkei), also known as the Processional Tôkaidô (Gyôretsu Tôkaidô), here called Tôkaidô meisho tsuzuki
Woodblock print
Tsukishimadera Temple in Hyôgo (Hyôgo Tsukishimadera), from the series Scenes of Famous Places along the Tôkaidô Road (Tôkaidô meisho fûkei), also known as the Processional Tôkaidô (Gyôretsu Tôkaidô), here called Tôkaidô meisho no uchi
Woodblock print
from the series One Hundred Pictures by Kyôsai (Kyôsai hyakuzu)
Woodblock print
Frequently Asked Questions
from the series One Hundred Pictures by Kyôsai (Kyôsai hyakuzu) was created by Kawanabe Kyosai (河鍋暁斎).
Yes — from the series One Hundred Pictures by Kyôsai (Kyôsai hyakuzu) is part of the One Hundred Pictures by Kyôsai series by Kawanabe Kyosai.