Wind And rain

Wind and Rain depicts figures or a lone traveler caught in a sudden storm, a subject Lum drew from the Japanese tradition of weather scenes pioneered by Hiroshige. The composition likely employs parallel diagonal lines incised on a separate rain block to render driving precipitation, layered over figures whose garments billow in the gale. Lum typically built up such atmospheric scenes through multiple impressions on dampened washi using the baren, with bokashi gradation to suggest a darkening sky. Working in Tokyo with trained Japanese carvers and printers from her first trip in 1903 onward, she adapted the meisho-e weather print to her own narrative sensibility, often introducing solitary, almost dreamlike figures rather than the bustling travelers seen in earlier Tokaido scenes. The subdued palette and emphasis on wind-driven motion are consistent with her interest in transient, evocative moods, and the print belongs to the body of Japanese-subject work she produced before relocating her practice toward Chinese themes in the 1920s.