Late summer

Late Summer depicts a tree or grove at the seasonal threshold before autumn, when foliage retains its mass but begins to register subtle shifts in tone. Sato's late summer compositions typically employ muted greens, ochres, and earth tones, sometimes with the metallic leaf passages he favored to suggest sunlight filtering through canopy. The image is built from multiple impressions on washi, with bokashi gradation likely used to soften transitions between sky and foliage or to model the volume of the crown. Late seasonal subjects fit within the broader meisho and shiki-e traditions of Japanese printmaking, though Sato approaches them without topographic specificity — there is no named location, only the condition of the season. The print extends his lifelong focus on trees as the central subject of his work, a focus directly traceable to his apprenticeship under Joichi Hoshi at a time when Hoshi was producing the tree compositions for which he became known. Sato's contribution to this lineage lies in the integration of metallic pigment into otherwise restrained naturalist imagery.