Peony No. 28

Peony No. 28 belongs to Sugiura Kazutoshi's other major serial preoccupation, the botan or tree peony, a subject inherited from Chinese flower painting and reworked extensively in Japanese woodblock printmaking from the eighteenth century onward. Where the iris series investigates verticality and linear structure, the peony series concentrates on mass, the heavy multi-petalled bloom and the dark, lobed leaves that surround it. The compositional convention typically isolates one or two flowers against a plain or burnished ground, a treatment that lets the color layering register fully. Sugiura's mature method combines gold-leaf application, silkscreen, and lithographic texture; in mokuhanga form, similar effects depend on overprinting, [bokashi](/glossary/bokashi) gradation, and careful [baren](/glossary/baren) pressure on [washi](/glossary/washi) to build petal volume. The peony's traditional symbolism of wealth and refinement frames a body of work whose presence in collections including the Art Institute of Chicago and the British Museum reflects sustained institutional interest in Sugiura's reinterpretation of [kacho-e](/glossary/kacho-e).