Peonies

Peonies — the queen of Chinese and Japanese ornamental flowers, prized since the Tang dynasty for their enormous, ruffled blooms and associated with wealth, honor, and prosperity — are rendered in this 1924 woodblock print in ink and color on paper. Kazuma brings to the peony his characteristic combination of Western floral painting sensibility and Japanese printmaking technique: the flowers built up through the woodblock's characteristic flat color areas rather than brushed freely, yet maintaining the lush, open character of the full-blown peony in its brief moment of perfection.