This is one of few surviving works by Kano Nagayoshi (also known as Kano Eiry), the sixth head of the Kyoto Kano school. Recent scholarship reveals that his work is closely associated with the individualistic paintings of contemporaries such as Itō Jakuchū and Ike no Taiga, Kyoto artists who were not of the Kano school. In this painting, white pigment is applied in a spattering technique, unusual for orthodox Kano painting. The herons, often an allusion to winter, are painted in white and are nearly concealed in the snowy landscape, revealing themselves only upon close examination. They hover close to one another, as if sharing warmth to endure their cold surroundings. Their soft, immaculate feathers are in stark contrast to their spindly dark legs and the snow-laden reeds.