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- Medium:
- Woodblock print
- Source:
- Metropolitan Museum of Art
- Image courtesy of
- Metropolitan Museum of Art
Description
This Kiyochika print likely depicts one of the transformation sites of Meiji Tokyo, where new construction, foreign architecture, and remnants of the Edo city coexisted in the same visual field. His compositional practice frequently placed traditional elements — a torii gate, a grove of pine trees, a wooden storehouse — in proximity to brick chimneys, telegraph poles, or gas streetlamps, allowing the image to read simultaneously as historical record and aesthetic statement. The atmospheric treatment of sky, rendered through multiple passages of gradated color on dampened paper, provides a unifying tonal register that bridges the contrasting elements. Kiyochika's prints in this vein influenced later Taishō-era landscape printmakers.