Kōno Bairei

About Kōno Bairei

Bairei trained in the Maruyama–Shijō school of Kyoto, which joined close observation of nature with a loose, economical brush, and later taught younger Kyoto painters, among them Takeuchi Seihō. In albums such as “Bairei hyakuchō gafu”, his book of a hundred birds, colour woodblock carries that brushwork over: soft washes, outlines in a few strokes, often open paper around the subject.

Each picture here keeps to a single subject, as an album page does: a bird on a branch, an egret, butterflies over flowers, a camellia or a peony. Four landscapes widen the view, with a temple pavilion, a village with a haystack, a waterfall and a bridge in winter. Bairei’s birds, flowers and landscapes are made to order in Berlin as giclée prints with pigment inks, on matte 210 g/m² fine art paper or 400 g/m² cotton canvas, in sizes A4 to A0.