Sketches of baby (the first son of Onchi, Kunio)

"Sketches of baby (the first son of Onchi, Kunio)" is among the most personally intimate works in Onchi's output — a multiple-study print of his own infant child, the new father's observational practice turned toward the most immediate available subject. The sleeping or waking baby provided Onchi with a compositional subject requiring close observation of small, rapidly changing forms: the round face, the curled limbs, the expressions of infancy that flicker and transform. These family studies represent a direct transfer of his formal portrait discipline into the most private domestic sphere.