Falcon on a Willow (c. 1780): Art, History and Details

Falcon on a Willow (c. 1780) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Isoda Koryūsai (Japanese, 1735–1790).

The work and its context

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

The technique here is marked by white lines and areas set against a dark background. Damp paper was placed on a carved wooden block and pressed into the engraved incisions. The paper was then hand colored, the sunken areas remaining white and appearing in reserve against the colored background. The effect is meant to resemble a stone rubbing, a traditional technique in China used to reproduce and preserve images on monuments on paper.

Object facts

• Title: Falcon on a Willow
• Date: c. 1780
• Creator attribution: Isoda Koryūsai (Japanese, 1735–1790)
• Culture: Japan, Edo period (1615–1868)
• Type: Print
• Technique: color woodblock print with hand coloring; stonerubbing technique (ishizuri-e)
• Dimensions: Overall: 77.5 x 29.8 cm (30 1/2 x 11 3/4 in.)
• Collection: Japanese Art
• Department: Japanese Art
• Accession number: 1985.363

Collection credit

The Kelvin Smith Collection, given by Mrs. Kelvin Smith

Further reading listed by the museum

• Sotheby's London. Highly Important Japanese Prints, Illustrated Books and Drawings, from the Henri Vever Collection: Part I. March 26, 1974.

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.