First Snow
by Sarah Brayer
- Date:
- Not set
- Medium:
- Woodblock print
- Format:
- Oban
- Source:
- Japanese Art Open Database
by Sarah Brayer
$2,000–$8,000. Snow and night scenes tend to command premium prices for this artist. Key value factors: Brayer's unique luminous technique on handmade washi appeals to collectors of both Japanese prints and contemporary art.
The arrival of the season's first snow is a moment of transformation that Brayer captures through her abstract mokuhanga vocabulary. Rather than depicting snowflakes falling on rooftops or blanketing a landscape, the print likely renders the phenomenon as a shift in light quality, a brightening of the visual field as white particles fill the air and accumulate on surfaces. The title's emphasis on "first" signals the transitional threshold Brayer often seeks: the instant when one condition gives way to another. Snow in Kyoto is infrequent enough to be an event, and the city's wooden architecture and temple gardens take on an unfamiliar hushed beauty under even a light dusting. Brayer translates this perceptual shift into layered washes of pale color on washi.
Woodblock print
c. 1832/38
Color woodblock print; oban
Yuki no Miyajima
1929
Color woodblock print; oban
1932
Woodblock print
First Snow was created by Sarah Brayer in Not set.
First Snow depicts snow scenes.
