Details
The image
Butterflies and birds arranged around a flowering stem, each one drawn with a fine contour and filled with a single flat tone, the background left as paper. The composition is asymmetric and open, and the eye moves upward along the stem rather than settling on a centre.
Where it comes from
The sheet comes from Yatsuo no tsubaki, the series Taguchi Tomoki made between 1860 and 1869 in the last years of the Edo period, when ukiyo-e was at its most assured. Birds and insects appear in the series as companions to the plants rather than as subjects in their own right, which is why the arrangement follows the botany and not the animals. Each colour was printed from a separate block cut along the grain, so the fineness of the line depended on the cutter’s hand as much as on the designer’s drawing.
On the wall
It suits a study, a bedroom or a reading corner, where a vertical composition with open space makes a room feel calmer. Because the palette is limited and the line is fine, it needs daylight and a wall that is not busy. In a group it should be the lightest piece.
In company
For a wall that will carry more than one, the Taguchi Tomoki collection supplies the rest.Hung beside a second sheet from the series. It reads as a pair rather than as two pictures.
