Japanese Print "Little Cuckoo Escaping from the Rain" by Utagawa Hiroshige
Artist:Utagawa Hiroshige
Title:Little Cuckoo Escaping from the Rain
Date:early 1830s
Details:More information...
Source:Worcester Art Museum
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Description:
The mysterious Little Cuckoo is known for letting out its gentle, chattering call to announce an early summer rainstorm before rapidly darting ahead of the raindrops: Two voices crossing High over Gomosaki- A cuckoo and rain. Futagoe wa / gomosaki koezu / hototogisu The Little Cuckoo flying over mountain-woods forms an elegant, "determined" silhouette, with its slender body, pointed beak and wings and its yellow eye-ring. Since the feathers have a brownish-red tint, it is probably a female. The female cuckoo, which has a chest-plumage with black, horizontal stripes like that of a raptor, frightens brooding birds from their nests. She then parasitically lays her egg in a host nest leaving it to hatch as a foster nestling. Two chu-tanzaku-format prints were economically printed side-by-side on vertical oban-format sheets. Lines along the left edge of the print (covered by mat) prove that the work was once paired with Hiroshige's equally famous design of a Scops Owl sleeping on a pine tree branch.
