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- Medium:
- Woodblock print
- Source:
- Metropolitan Museum of Art
- Image courtesy of
- Metropolitan Museum of Art
Description
Among Kiyochika's woodblock output, prints of this type focus on the experience of fire — conflagrations were regular events in the densely built wooden city — and the dramatic play of flame against darkness. If this print belongs to his fire series, it would employ a warm orange-red palette reserved for the blaze, surrounded by deep indigo and black for the night sky and silhouetted structures. The technical challenge of rendering fire in a woodblock medium required multiple color blocks and careful registration, with the hottest portions of the flame left as the lightest areas of the washi support. Kiyochika's fire prints are among the most technically and compositionally demanding works of the kosen-ga genre.