Details

This stark, penetrating self-portrait by Koshiro Onchi, executed in July 1915, is a work of quiet intensity and psychological immediacy. Drawn in bold, angular strokes of black ink, the image distills the essence of the artist’s features—thick, expressive hair, furrowed brow, and direct gaze—into a portrait as much psychological as physical. There is no background, no contextual device to distract from the face; only a lightly worn surface that allows Onchi’s raw linework to speak with clarity and depth.

At the time of this drawing, Onchi was in his mid-twenties, still several years away from his emergence as a defining figure of the Sosaku Hanga movement. The work reflects a young artist in self-confrontation, searching his own visage not merely for likeness but for meaning. Each line is charged with a kind of controlled urgency, suggesting both confidence and self-questioning. The drawing is both a declaration and an inquiry.

Connoisseur's Note

As a rare surviving example of Onchi’s early draftsmanship, this 1915 self-portrait offers profound insight into the intellectual and emotional foundations of a revolutionary artist. Though he would later become known primarily for his avant-garde abstract prints and poetic contributions to the Sosaku Hanga movement, this drawing reveals the raw visual literacy from which his more conceptual works evolved. The graphic force of the linework—unadorned and yet strikingly expressive—presages the directness and philosophical weight that would characterize his mature output.

Moreover, the decision to inscribe the date and location (“July 1915”) directly on the paper adds to the documentarian quality of the piece. It is an unguarded moment, historically fixed, wherein the artist confronts the role of selfhood in creation. For collectors of modern Japanese art, this work represents not just a portrait, but a touchstone: a rare window into the inward gaze of Onchi before he transformed the vocabulary of Japanese printmaking in the 20th century.