Untitled

An unidentified print attributed to Kiyochika, classified with an abstract subject designation. Within his documented practice, works falling outside established subject categories may derive from the experimental phases of his career in which he most aggressively tested Western tonal methods within the woodblock medium. His study of Western techniques under the influence of Charles Wirgman in the early Meiji period produced work approaching tone and gradation differently from the flat color areas conventional in nishiki-e, and this experimental orientation could generate compositions that resist easy subject classification. Prints from this experimental phase are sometimes described as kosen-ga precursors—works in which the atmospheric and tonal investigation was still being resolved before it solidified into the distinctive light-picture compositions of the late 1870s series for which Kiyochika became known.