Wild Geese

This kacho-e depicts wild geese, a subject Koson returned to repeatedly across his career and one of the most enduring motifs in Japanese bird-and-flower printmaking. Koson's wild goose compositions typically place one or several birds against a minimal ground — a stretch of sky rendered in graduated bokashi, a low band of water, or reeds arranged with calligraphic economy. The plumage is built up through successive impressions from carefully cut blocks, with the printer using the baren to vary pressure across the bird's body so that breast and underwing read as softer than the firmer, darker primaries. Issued through the publisher Daikokuya during the early Showa years, this print belongs to the body of work for which Koson is principally remembered: a sustained, observational study of native Japanese birds executed in the shin-hanga idiom. Compared to Edo-period treatments of the same subject, Koson's geese tend toward atmospheric naturalism rather than decorative flatness, reflecting his exposure to nihonga painting under Suzuki Kason.