Seitei kacho gafu (Bird-and-flower painting album) by WATANABE Seitei

Seitei kacho gafu is a bird-and-flower painting album produced in 1890–91 (Meiji 23–24). It was published by Okura Shoten, which at the time issued art books, such as painting albums, with an eye toward exporting to the West amid the Japonisme boom and toward supplying design sources for crafts in Japan. Seitei, the album's creator, is renowned as a master of bird-and-flower painting. Dispatched to the 1878 Paris Exposition (Meiji 11), he demonstrated improvised painting and the making of hanging scrolls at local salons, earning widespread acclaim. His distinctive style—rooted in traditional Japanese painting schools such as the Maruyama-Shijo and Rimpa schools, yet shaped by Western painting he encountered during his stay in Paris—won high recognition both in Japan and abroad. For further details, see "Seitei kacho gafu—An artist born in the late Edo period who lived through turbulent times" (National Diet Library Monthly Bulletin, No. 717, January 2021).