Untitled

This untitled print from Kiyochika's corpus, classified as abstract, may reflect the influence of Western printing and illustration techniques on his compositional vocabulary. Kiyochika is known to have studied with the British illustrator Charles Wirgman in Yokohama and had exposure to European newspapers and illustrated periodicals circulating in the treaty port environment. The visual logic of halftone reproduction, woodcut illustration, and lithographic shading appears in his more experimental work as a counterpoint to the traditional [ukiyo-e](/glossary/ukiyo-e) vocabulary. A print classified as abstract may occupy the intersection of these influences without fully resolving into either tradition, printed on [washi](/glossary/washi) using conventional woodblock technique.