Nuthatch on a Flowering Cherry Tree
桜花鳥図
by Mori Kansai
- Date:
- 1873
- Medium:
- Album leaf; ink and color on silk
桜花鳥図
by Mori Kansai
Nuthatch on a Flowering Cherry Tree is the opening leaf of the 1873 Mori Kansai album in the Rhode Island School of Design Museum (accession 2001.16A). The composition pairs the nuthatch — a small forest bird closely associated in Japanese bird painting with bark-foraging on pine, oak, and cherry — with a flowering cherry branch, the most quintessentially Japanese of all spring subjects. The combination places the leaf in the long kachō-e tradition of pairing a single closely observed bird with a seasonally specific flowering branch, in the manner that the Maruyama-Shijō and Mori-Kishi schools had codified through generations of sketching-from-life practice. As the opening leaf of the fifteen-leaf album, the subject anchors the cycle in spring before the album proceeds through other seasonal and figural subjects. Signed and dated 1873.
朝妻舟図摺物
mid-19th century
Woodblock print diptych (surimono); ink and color on paper with metallic pigments
梅花小禽図
1873
Album leaf; ink and color on silk
能効藥種
circa 1847–1852
Woodblock-printed book illustration; ink and color on paper
波貝図
1873
Album leaf; ink and color on silk
Nuthatch on a Flowering Cherry Tree (桜花鳥図) was created by Mori Kansai (森寛斎) in 1873.
Nuthatch on a Flowering Cherry Tree depicts birds & flowers.
