Japan has a long and rich tradition of using animal imagery in works of art. A Brush with Animals. Japanese Painting 1700-1950 gives an overview of Japanese animal painting, covering some 250 years, with an emphasis on works by artists of the naturalistic Shijo School. It illustrates the wonderful variety of animals that figure in Japanese iconography, including the 12 animals of the zodiac and many mythological creatures. The reader is thus taken on a tour through the animal kingdom, which is profusely illustrated with no less than 300 colour images. A selection of essays explains in...

The work of print artist Ohara Koson (1877-1945) mainly consists of prints of birds and flowers, characterised by their peaceful charm. This book about Koson is the first Western publication of his oeuvre of prints and paintings. It provides all known information on the artist's life and work, his teachers and publishers, facsimiles of his signatures and seals and illustrations of an estimated seventy-five percent of his total print output, now kept in the splendid collection of Japanese prints in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. First published in 2001, this new edition features an additional...

The Beauty of Silence. Japanese Nō and Nature Prints by Tsukioka Kōgyo (1867-1927) is the first monograph in English on Tsukioka Kōgyo, one of the lesser-known exponents of Japanese woodblock prints of the Meiji period (1868-1912). This publication exposes Kōgyo's life and work, presenting a detailed and abundantly-illustrated overview of his rich oeuvre of prints and paintings, and places them in the context of his times. For the first time, Kōgyo's life and work are accessible to readers throughout the world. Kōgyo is particularly well-known for his many...

Utagawa Kunisada (1786-1865) was one of the most successful Japanese woodblock print designers of his age. With an estimated output of some twenty-five thousand prints during a career spanning almost sixty years Kunisada was a towering figure in the sphere of ukiyo-e. His versatility and inventiveness extended across genres, from the stars of the kabuki stage to the women from the pleasure districts, the world of entertainment and the everyday, as well as landscapes, warriors and literary themes. Kunisada was greatly respected during his lifetime as a print designer of the Utagawa...