View Of Mt.Tsukuba

Mt. Tsukuba, the twin-peaked sacred mountain in Ibaraki Prefecture, is among the oldest utamakura (poetic place-names) in Japanese literature, appearing in the Man'yoshu and codified in landscape painting from the medieval period onward. Settai's treatment fits within the meisho-e tradition but filtered through his characteristically spare nihonga aesthetic. Rather than the multi-plane, atmospheric perspective associated with Hokusai or Hiroshige's mountain views, Settai's landscapes tend toward flat, decorative arrangement — the mountain reduced to clean silhouette, foreground and middle distance separated by horizontal bands of color or mist (suyari-gasumi) rather than by graduated bokashi. The double silhouette of Tsukuba's male and female peaks (Nantai and Nyotai) gives the design an inherent symmetry that suits Settai's preference for ordered, almost graphic composition. The print likely uses a restrained palette of indigo, grey, and the cream of unprinted washi, executed with the precise registration his publishers demanded.