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](/glossary/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](/glossary/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](/glossary/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](/glossary/baren) printing into the visual vocabulary of early twentieth-century European still life.