Unknown night boat scene
by Koho Shoda
- Medium:
- Woodblock print
- Format:
- Oban
- Source:
- Japanese Art Open Database
by Koho Shoda
$200–$1,500. Snow and night scenes tend to command premium prices for this artist. Key value factors: Shoda Koho's elegant nature prints are beautifully produced and accessible to beginning collectors.
This [oban](/glossary/oban) woodblock print depicts a boat on dark water at night, its specific location and purpose left unidentified. The vessel sits low in the water, its hull catching fragments of ambient light while the surrounding darkness absorbs most detail. Shoda's decision to leave the scene unnamed grants it a universal quality; this could be any boat on any body of water, on any night. The darkness is rendered not as flat black but as a layered field of deep blues and grays, with the water's surface distinguished from the sky by subtle differences in texture and reflectivity. A faint light source, perhaps the moon behind clouds or a distant shore, provides just enough illumination to define the boat's essential shape. The print belongs to Shoda's extensive series of nocturnal water scenes, where boats serve as lonely markers of human presence in vast, indifferent darkness.
Woodblock print
Hansen, yoru
1926
Color woodblock print
1915
Color woodblock print
Hansen, asa
1926
Color woodblock print
Curated cross-cuts that include this print.
Unknown night boat scene was created by Koho Shoda (庄田耕峰).
Unknown night boat scene depicts boats & ships and night scenes.
