Torii Kiyonaga

Torii Kiyonaga
The third month, cherry blossom viewing at Mt Asuka (Sanngatsu Asukayama no hanami 三月飛鳥山の花見) 1784
colour woodblock
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased, 1941

Through the work of artists such as Torii Kiyonaga, Kitagawa Utamaro, and Utagawa Toyokuni, Victoria & Albert Museum curator Edward Strange considered ‘the process of colour printing [to have] arrived at its greatest technical level’. In their works, he continued, ‘we find the full possibilities of line, colour, and massed black, combined with rare judgement and taste’.

Here, Kiyonaga employs the compositional device of the
‘obstructed view’: a sinuous tree trunk dominates the foreground, dividing the pictorial space to privilege Nature and heighten an element of intrigue in the narrative.