Sea birds

A fourth treatment of the seabird motif, differing from its companions in vantage, the density of birds across the flock, or the proportion of sky to water within the composition. Ono's printmaking — entirely self-carved and self-printed in the sosaku-hanga manner — meant that each sheet carries small variations in registration and ink density that would have been smoothed away under the studio division of labour that produced Edo-period ukiyo-e. Ono trained in the Ichimoku-kai circle around Koshiro Onchi during the 1930s, absorbing the group's conviction that the print should be owned end-to-end by the artist. His later seascape and bird subjects carry that orientation forward while turning away from the documentary social content of his prewar work toward a contemplative landscape vocabulary built from rhythm, silhouette and the texture of the washi sheet.