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- Medium:
- Woodblock print
- Source:
- Waseda University
- Image courtesy of
- Waseda University
Description
An unidentified Kobayashi Kiyochika woodblock print, this work represents his Meiji-period practice in a genre that cannot be confirmed without title documentation. Kiyochika's career moved through several distinct phases: the celebrated kosen-ga atmospheric views of Tokyo (circa 1876–1881), a period of political caricature for the magazine Marumaru Chinbun, historical and biographical series print production in the 1880s, and a sustained engagement with Sino-Japanese War subjects in the 1890s. Regardless of genre, his prints are technically identifiable by their unusual palette — cooler, more desaturated tones than the aniline-saturated prints of his contemporaries — and by compositional strategies that use empty space and atmospheric graduation to establish depth and mood on the flat picture plane.