Skylarks

A kacho-e featuring skylarks (hibari), small ground-nesting songbirds associated in Japanese poetic tradition with spring fields and the sound of dawn. Prints of skylarks typically show one or more birds rising into open sky above grasses or barley, exploiting the high vertical proportions of the oban or hashira-e format to convey ascent. In Shoun's hands such designs would have been printed with bokashi gradations to indicate sky and ground, fine keyblock outlining of the birds' striated plumage, and reserved areas of unprinted washi to render brightness. Skylarks appear less frequently in the kacho-e canon than cranes or sparrows, and their selection here suggests an interest in less codified subjects rather than the standard repertoire. The print belongs to the bird-and-flower thread of Shoun's career that ran alongside his bijin-ga and his images of children at play, demonstrating the breadth of subjects designers of his generation were expected to handle.