Crows No4

Crows No. 4 belongs to a numbered sequence in which Tanaka Ryohei turned his etching needle to the black birds that populate Japan's rural skies and rooftops year-round. The likely image shows one or several crows set against a spare landscape — perhaps perched on a bare branch, a thatched ridge, or a stone wall — rendered through the close cross-hatching and aquatint tonal washes typical of his copperplate practice. The bird's plumage offers an etcher unusually receptive subject matter: the densest passages of bitten line yield the deep, light-absorbing black that matches the crow's actual feathering, while small reserved highlights catch the eye and beak. The series number indicates Tanaka's habitual return to favored motifs, working through variations as he did with his minka and country lanes. Although best known for architectural subjects, Tanaka frequently included the resident wildlife of the Japanese countryside — crows, sparrows, persimmons left on bare trees — as quiet markers of the seasons and of the inhabited rural world that surrounded the farmhouses at the center of his work.