Fox’s training of disguising

Catalog note / 解説

A member of the prominent Utagawa School of woodblock artists, Kuniyoshi gained acclaim with his intricately detailed and dynamic musha-e (warrior prints). However, never one to be pigeonholed, he also tried his hand at landscape compositions along with experimental works such as the one seen here. In this print he abandons his trademark tightly focused style for a more spacious composition. Among the sleek bodies of the foxes one can still catch a glimmer of Utagawa's mastery of detail in the kimono patterns of the creatures. Within Japanese folklore no creature embodies the same mix of contradictions that can be found in the fox spirit. Servant of the goddess Inari, destructive trickster…