Nana Shiomi: 見立て百景 (その29)「落雁」 (One Hundred Views of Mitate No.29: Wild Geese (Raku-gan)).

Contemporary Woodblock Print

A fabulous print by Nana Shiomi: 見立て百景 (その29)「落雁」 (One Hundred Views of Mitate No.29: Wild Geese (Raku-gan)). A flock of white geese sweeps across a rich earthen-red sky, their loose formation suspended above Shiomi’s sharply receding yellow-ochre ground. The birds provide a lovely sense of movement and life. 🪿🪿

• Year & Edition: 2000 · Ed. 3/10 (signed, titled & editioned in pencil).
  
• Series: 見立て百景 (One Hundred Views of Mitate) · No.29.
  
• Medium: Woodblock.
  
• Dimensions: Sheet H: 46.00 cm × W: 46.00 cm (Image H: 34.00 cm × W: 34.00 cm).
  
• Condition: Mint. Well stored over the years.
  
• Notes: Rakugan (落雁) refers to descending or alighting wild geese, a long-established seasonal motif in East Asian painting and poetry, particularly associated with autumn and migrating birds. Within One Hundred Views of Mitate, Shiomi removes the geese from a conventional landscape and places them instead within her distinctive red-and-ochre pictorial space. Their natural, irregular flight contrasts strongly with the rigid perspective grid below, transforming a familiar traditional motif into something strikingly modern. Mitate (見立て) - the practice of seeing one thing as another or finding new meaning in the familiar - lies at the heart of Shiomi’s one-hundred-print series, created between 1998 and 2016.

About the Artist

Nana Shiomi (b. 1956, Osaka) is a Japanese printmaker best known for her 見立て百景 (One Hundred Views of Mitate) series. Trained at Tama Art University and the Royal College of Art, Shiomi combines traditional Japanese woodblock methods with a contemporary approach to familiar cultural motifs, exploring ideas of reflection, reversal and mitate - seeing one thing through another. Her work is held by the Victoria & Albert Museum and British Museum, and in 2025 she was awarded Life Honorary Fellowship of the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers in recognition of her contribution to printmaking. [ ← View All Works by Nana Shiomi]