Dancing Fox (1900–1910s): Art, History and Details

Dancing Fox (1900–1910s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Ohara Koson (Japanese, 1877–1945).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

In this whimsical Japanese color woodcut, a fox holds a giant green leaf on its head and dances on its hind legs in the rain. A prolific printmaker, Ohara Koson created hundreds of kachōga, a genre encompassing images of nature. Translating characteristics of traditional Japanese painting into color woodcuts, Koson depicted flowers, insects, fish, birds, and mammals. Dancing Fox is one of a few in which he imagined a lighthearted scenario.

Object facts

• Title: Dancing Fox
• Date: 1900–1910s
• Creator attribution: Ohara Koson (Japanese, 1877–1945)
• Type: Print
• Technique: Color woodcut
• Collection: Japanese Art
• Department: Japanese Art
• Accession number: 2016.546

Collection credit

Gift in honor of Delbert Gutridge, CMA Registrar 1968-1996

Further reading listed by the museum

• Newland, Amy Reigle, Jan Perrée, and Robert Schaap. Crows, Cranes & Camellias: The Natural World of Ohara Koson 1877-1945 Japanese Prints from the Jan Perrée Collection. Leiden: Hotei Pub, 2001.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.