Reed-Bunting and Reed, from Pictorial Monograph of Birds (Shūchō gafu)
聚鳥畫譜 — 蒿雀と葦
by Numata Kashū
- Date:
- 1885
- Medium:
- Color woodblock print from a book; ink and color on paper
聚鳥畫譜 — 蒿雀と葦
by Numata Kashū
Reed-Bunting and Reed pairs the ōjurin (reed bunting) with the marsh reed it conventionally inhabits, in one of the more austerely composed plates in Numata Kashū's Shūchō gafu (1885). The reed bunting is a small, brown-streaked songbird of marshes and damp grasslands across Eurasia, common across Japan as a winter resident; its modest coloring and reedy habitat give Kashū the opportunity for a low-saturation composition in browns, ochres, and muted greens that contrasts deliberately with the brighter pheasant and bulbul plates elsewhere in the album. The composition places the bird on a single bent reed stem against generous negative space, drawing on the long Edo-period habit of using empty paper as the visual register of cold air, mist, or the sense of solitary winter morning. The plate is a useful illustration of the way Kashū's album moved through the full ecological year of the Japanese archipelago, giving as much attention to inconspicuous marsh birds as to brilliantly colored garden species.
聚鳥畫譜 — 鵯と柊
1885
Color woodblock print from a book; ink and color on paper
聚鳥畫譜 — 鵯と浜茄子
1885
Color woodblock print from a book; ink and color on paper
聚鳥畫譜 — 鷲と荒海
1885
Color woodblock print from a book; ink and color on paper
聚鳥畫譜
1885, first month
Polychrome woodblock printed book; ink and color on paper
Reed-Bunting and Reed, from Pictorial Monograph of Birds (Shūchō gafu) (聚鳥畫譜 — 蒿雀と葦) was created by Numata Kashū (沼田荷舟) in 1885.
Reed-Bunting and Reed, from Pictorial Monograph of Birds (Shūchō gafu) depicts birds & flowers.
