Nan hei, Peking

Nan Hai, a district in central Peking (Beijing), provides the setting for this oban woodblock print by Pieter Irwin Brown. The name likely refers to the area around Nanhai Lake, one of the three interconnected lakes within the former Imperial City, adjacent to the Forbidden City. This was a landscape of willows, pavilions, and causeways that had been shaped by imperial design over centuries. Brown, traveling through China as a Western artist working in a Japanese print medium, occupied a unique position: he applied woodblock techniques learned from Japanese practice to Chinese subjects that Japanese printmakers rarely depicted. The result is a hybrid work that filters Chinese imperial architecture and landscape through a process rooted in Japanese craft tradition. The flat water surface of the lake and the horizontal lines of traditional Chinese architecture translate well into the woodblock medium's layered printing approach.