Crow and Snow is an undated [shin-hanga](/glossary/shin-hanga) [kacho-e](/glossary/kacho-e) (bird-and-flower print) by Ohara Koson, signed Shoson, and one of several crow-in-winter compositions he produced during his career with the Watanabe Shozaburo workshop. The image is recorded through the [ukiyo-e](/glossary/ukiyo-e).org database. Crows are a recurrent subject for Koson, and the contrast between their pure black plumage and a snow-covered branch offers an almost ideographic visual problem that he addresses with characteristic restraint. The composition places a single crow on a slender, snow-laden branch, with the bird's silhouette filling much of the visual field against a near-white ground. The black plumage is printed with sufficient density that the bird reads as a sharply cut shape, while small modulations of tone within the body suggest folded feathers without breaking the silhouette. The snow on the branch is rendered partly through unprinted paper and partly through subtle grey [bokashi](/glossary/bokashi) to suggest the heaviness of the accumulated drift. The branch itself is drawn as a clean, calligraphic diagonal organizing the sheet. Koson's strict economy of means here connects the print directly to the older Kano and Maruyama-Shijo bird-and-flower traditions in which a single observed animal carries the entire compositional weight. As a Shoson-period kacho-e, Crow and Snow exemplifies the shin-hanga movement's reconciliation of traditional Japanese subject matter with the precision standards of the Watanabe workshop and the international collector market.
Curated cross-cuts that include this print.
Crow and snow was created by Ohara Koson (小原古邨).
Crow and snow depicts birds & flowers and winter.
