With eyes closed

A close-up portrait of a woman with eyes closed, the subject turned inward in stillness or repose. The mezzotint technique—rocking a serrated tool across the copper plate to create a uniformly burred ground that prints velvety black, then burnishing selected areas back toward white—renders skin and shadow as continuous tonal gradient rather than line. Saito uses this gradient to model the soft weight of closed lids, the curve of a cheek, and the surrounding darkness from which the face emerges. The intimate scale and contemplative subject typify his portraits of women, which depart from the more public, narrative [bijin-ga](/glossary/bijin-ga) of earlier [ukiyo-e](/glossary/ukiyo-e) in favor of interior emotional states. Saito turned from abstract oils to intaglio in 1968 and was self-taught in the demanding mezzotint method.