Apples

A still life of apples executed in mokuhanga, an uncommon subject in Inagaki's catalog and one that lets him apply the same reductive vocabulary he developed for his cat prints to inanimate form. The fruit is likely modeled as a few broad color planes — flat reds or russets set against a neutral ground — with the wood grain of the block sometimes left visible across the background as a textural element, a sosaku-hanga convention that foregrounds the matrix rather than concealing it. Volumes are suggested by adjacent tonal blocks rather than line shading, with any modeling achieved through bokashi gradation rather than hatching. Inagaki's still-life work draws on the same compositional instincts as the European post-impressionist studies he absorbed during his training in Western-style oil painting at the Hongo Institute under Okada Saburosuke before turning to woodblock in the late 1920s. The print sits at the intersection of those two formations: a Japanese craft method carrying a European pictorial subject, both stripped to their structural essentials.