Koson 小原古邨 : Cawing Crow 雪中の鴉 on a Snowy Bough, Grey Sky

Artist: Ohara Kōson 小原古邨 (1877-1945)
Title: Cawing Crow 雪中の鴉 on a Snowy Branch
Date: Ca. 1910

A jungle crow (Corvus macrorhynchos) vocalizes while perched on a snowy branch against a grey background, the color fitting for an overcast day. Crows were a favorite theme of the artist, and there is a painting that seems to have inspired this design– the painting may be found in the the Hiraki Ukiyo-e Museum's 1998 exhibition catalog. This design is also sought after because it was chosen as the cover image for Brown and Goodall-Cristante's important exhibition catalogue, Shin Hanga: New Prints in Modern Japan, published by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1996. 

This work was printed in two different color schemes; one gray and one orange; this coloration is by far the more scarce one. One might guess that the western market preferred the brighter contrast of the orange background and thus more were printed with the brighter background color. This color scheme aligns more to the Japanese aesthetic. To this dealer it seems that many “Koson”-signed designs may have been printed first in about 1910, and then had second editions printed in the late 1920s/early 1930s, due to their popularity in the west, and perhaps connected to the selling power of Robert Muller’s gallery in New York before the war. There are several versions of this design known in various formats. To this dealer, this example would seem to be from the very earliest edition and the Robert Muller example in the Smithsonian from an edition printed in the 1920s or 1930s–that version features shiny feathers and may include the “Made in Japan” stamp, verso, which was required on works intended for export in the 1920s and 1930s. As there seems to be no “paper trail” for much of Koson’s output–even when looked for by excellent scholars– we can say little definitively on the subject.

Condition: Excellent impression, color and condition. Minor hinging remnants, verso.
Dimensions: 36.9 x 19.3
Literature: See the cover of “Shin Hanga: New Prints in Modern Japan” for the grey version, as well as page 55. See “Crows, Cranes & Camellias”, numbers 48 and 48a, page 72 for this design. See National Museum of Asian Art Collection for the Muller example.  Signature: Koson

SKU: KSC047S