Floral Still-life

Floral Still-life shows Urushibara working in the genre that, after his Venetian views, was most closely associated with his name in Britain. The subject is a cut arrangement — most often roses, anemones, chrysanthemums, or mixed garden flowers — set in a vase or jar against a plain ground, presented frontally in the manner of European flower painting rather than the asymmetrical sprig of classical kacho-e. Urushibara constructed such prints from a key block carrying only the essential contours of petals and leaves, supported by overlapping color blocks that build up the bloom through successive flat passes and selective bokashi at the petal edges. The vase is typically modeled with a single graded impression to suggest a turned form, and the background is held as an unprinted or lightly tinted area of washi. The print belongs to the body of decorative still lifes Urushibara produced for the London art trade from the 1910s onward, and it documents how he carried Edo-period block-cutting and baren printing into the visual vocabulary of early twentieth-century European still life.