• Cockatoo and pomegranate (<i>Ōmu to zakuro</i> - おうむとざくろ)
Cockatoo and pomegranate (<i>Ōmu to zakuro</i> - おうむとざくろ)
Cockatoo and pomegranate (<i>Ōmu to zakuro</i> - おうむとざくろ)
Cockatoo and pomegranate (<i>Ōmu to zakuro</i> - おうむとざくろ)

Ohara Koson (小原古邨) / Shōson (祥邨) (artist 1877 – 1945)

Cockatoo and pomegranate (Ōmu to zakuro - おうむとざくろ)

Print


ca 1927
10.2 in x 15.3 in (Overall dimensions) Japanese woodblock print
Signed: Shōson (祥邨)
Artist's seal: Shōson
Harvard Art Museums
San Diego Museum of Art
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Adachi Museum of Art
Rijksmuseum
Art Institute of Chicago
Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa
Honolulu Museum of Art
Nihon no hanga
National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo - a small color image
Huntington (West Virginia) Museum of Art
Rhode Island School of Design The Cockatoo and Pomegranate is Shōson's most famous image "...first printed in 1927 in an edition of three hundred but reprinted many times. Cockatoos were not uncommon in Edo-period art: Itō Jakuchu (1716-1800) alone made at least four paintings of them. The combination of the cockatoo and pomegranate, however, was new as was the striking juxtaposition of the cockatoo's white feathers against the black background and the submotif of the green leaves and ruby-colored pomegranate, flower and cocatoo's tongue. Shōson's cockatoo, with its embossed feathers, may have been inspired by Yoshida's Salmon-crested Cockatoo... from a series of four drawings made at the zoo. The embossing of the feathers and most notably the goma-zuri background show his adoption of techniques common in Watanabe's studio."

Qutoed from: Shin-Hanga: New Prints in Modern Japan, p. 56. This passage is accompanied by a small colored reproduction.

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This print is from a later edition. Originally printed in ca. 1927.

There is a similar print by Shōson in the Brooklyn Museum. And there are other copies of this print in the Adachi Ward Museum (足立 区立郷土博物館所蔵), Tokyo, the Toledo Museum of Art, the Chrysler Museum, the John and Mabel Ringling Museum of Art and the Joseph Schnitzler Museum of Art at the University of Portland.

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Illustrated:

1) in black and white in Japanese Woodblock Prints: Tourist Library vol. 10 by Shizuya Fujikake, 1953 edition, p, 92.

2) in black and white in 'The Reception of Ohara Koson’s kachōga in North America in the 1930s' (小原古邨の花鳥版画について : 1930年代のアメリカにおける受容を中心に), by Ihara Rieko (庵原理絵子), #25.
Watanabe Mokuhan Bujitsu Gahō (渡邊木版美術画舗) (publisher)
kachō-e (bird and flower picture - 花鳥絵) (genre)
modern prints (shin hanga - 新版画) (genre)
Shōwa era (昭和時代) (genre)