Untitled

An untitled Kiyochika woodblock print classified as abstract, this work falls within the kosen-ga body of production that made him one of the most formally distinctive printmakers of the Meiji period. The abstract classification may indicate a composition in which the subject — if there was one — is so thoroughly transformed by atmospheric treatment as to be unidentifiable from the image alone. This tendency toward visual dissolution, in which buildings, figures, or landscape elements dissolve into gradations of dark and light, is consistent with Kiyochika's broader artistic approach, which prioritized the quality of illumination over the description of the illuminated object. The formal precedents he established in these prints influenced later Japanese printmakers working in both traditional and Western media.