Fuji From Lake Ashi (Morning View) — 芦ノ湖の富士（朝の景）

Depicting Mount Fuji at dawn from the eastern shore of Lake Ashi in Hakone, this print engages a subject that has anchored Japanese landscape imagery from the Edo period through the modern sosaku-hanga movement. The Japanese title 芦ノ湖の富士（朝の景）specifies the morning hour, a time when Fuji's cone typically emerges from lingering cloud or mist, softening its form. Maeda would have carved and printed the block himself in keeping with sosaku-hanga principles, bringing a personal mark to a subject with deep iconographic history. The lake's surface in morning stillness provides a reflective plane that doubles the mountain's form, a compositional device that amplifies Fuji's visual weight. Color passages modulating from cool blues in the water to warmer tones at the sky's horizon suggest the transitional quality of early light. This impression represents one of multiple surviving versions of the composition held in the collection.