Islands at Matsushima

Created in 1915, this oban-format woodblock print shows the famous pine-clad islands of Matsushima Bay in northeastern Japan, traditionally ranked among the three most scenic views in the country. The bay contains roughly 260 small islands covered with twisted pine trees, their shapes eroded by wind and waves into fantastical forms. Matsushima has been celebrated in Japanese art since at least the 17th century, when the haiku poet Matsuo Basho visited and supposedly found the view so beautiful that he could not compose a poem adequate to describe it. Fritz Capelari approached this iconic landscape as a foreigner, unburdened by centuries of poetic association, and rendered the scattered islands and their pines with the observational clarity of European plein-air tradition. The woodblock technique's layered printing captured the varying blues of water and sky that make Matsushima's beauty primarily a matter of color and light.