Description
Although in Japanese writing the dragon is mostly represented with the simplified pictogram 竜 depicting a frontally viewed dragon, in this beautiful shodo (書道) calligraphy work we can appreciate the more elaborate and aesthetically refined form 龍, which is often used in literary contexts and which depicts in profile the body of the legendary creature.
The kanji 龍 derives graphically from the Chinese bronze inscriptions depicting a crowned serpent with prominent whiskered mouth and eyes. In the current form we see sketched, with simple and abstract lines, the whiskered mouth at lower left, surmounted by the eyes and a crown. On the right we see the body: tail at the top and legs in the lower part.
The work, made on a thick shikishi (色紙) cardboard with golden edges by the female calligrapher Keisen (恵泉), is in very good condition.
