About Me

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Washington, United States
loves: you win if you guessed "pets" and "museums". Also books, art history, travel, British punk, Korean kimchi, bindis, martinis, and other things TBD. I will always make it very clear if a post is sponsored in any way. Drop me a line at thepetmuseum AT gmail.com !

Thursday, August 04, 2016

just a bird on a vine

http://hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.46008  image courtesy the rijksmuseum (PD)
Here's Utagawa Hiroshige, the master known for the "100 Views of Edo" of 1848 on, with a look at a smaller world entirely: a woodcut dated round 1833-7, known at the Rijksmuseum as "Vogel en blauwe winde" (Bird on a blue bindweed).  Though known for his landscapes, Hiroshige was also lauded for his birds and flowers, and you see why.  This gray fellow has a typically alert face, but with a comic quirk to his beak, an interrogating look:  what, buddy?  I also love the smooth oval of his body.  So much bird, so little gesture to create him.

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