Kawanabe Kyosai (1831-1889)

Kyosai became particularly renowned as a painter of crows, with many hanging scrolls and prints on the subject. Here, two crows perch on a branch high above the temple and trees of Asakusa, one squawking angrily to the left. Conder thought especially highly of this painting, commenting:

"This is one of Kyosai's best paintings of crows. The forms of the birds are most powerfully dashed in with black ink, the half-tones washed with a lighter ink, and the beaks, eyes and claws sharply outlined with a fine brush. The tree branches and foliage, in the upper part of the picture, are boldly drawn in different shades of ink; and, at the bottom of the painting, a distant view of the temple and trees of Asakusa is shown, softly washed in, with streaks of mist out of which appears the large red orb of the rising sun. The picture is a beautiful example of chiaroscuro obtained by ink shades of different degrees of intensity...."
Josiah Conder, 1911, p.106