"Cormorants" 1940 Gifu Prefecture is noted for its cormorants, and for Seison, a Gifu native, it is this bird that was perhaps closest to his heart. In this painting, the large area of unpainted space for which painters in this traditional painting style are noted creates in the viewer a sense of stillness, while the blue-green eyes of the cormorants fill the work with a mysterious sense of presence. Maeda Seison: Born in Gifu Prefecture in 1885. Through the introduction of Ozaki Koyo, he was able to study under Kajita Hanko, where he worked hard at reproducing picture scrolls. He joined the Kojikai in 1907 and was widely noticed as a rising artist when he was awarded a prize at the Bunten exhibition. He established a bracing style of portraiture and also produced a large number of still life and flower and bird paintings using rich colors to form a fresh impression. Copyright of all the pictures in this Web site belongs to the artists or the Adachi Museum of Art