A Very Fine Album of Fifty Kacho-E (Bird & Flower Prints).

Japan, (c. 1860) Folio (365 x 250mm), Original Embossed Green Card Covers, with 50 Finely Coloured Prints of Birds and Flowers. Possibly the work (Birds & Flowers of the Four Seasons)

A pupil of Utagawa Hiroshige (1797-1858), the Japanese artist Nakayama Sugakudo flourished from the middle of the nineteenth century to the early 1860s. He was a ukiyo-e artist. The exact dates of his birth and death are unknown. The Edo Period was in its final years when Sugakudo produced his art

He is a renowned artist, particularly for his series Exact Reproductions of Forty-Eight Birds (1858) and Birds and Flowers of the Four Seasons (1861). These designs are acclaimed for their realistic rendering of the natural world, as well as their delicacy of colour, fine embossing, and highly technical quality.

Despite being taught by Hiroshige, he focused on kacho-e art rather than copying aspects of his teacher. Sugakudo, for slightly over a decade, became popular for this art form. Therefore, his art shines brightly concerning kacho-e in the middle of the nineteenth century.

These Illustrations of Birds and Flowers include some of his most famous images:

Swallows, Finches, Warblers, Hawks, Cranes and Herons, Parrots and Waders along with Exotic Plants and Flowers