Girl in Grey

The grey palette of this girl portrait—cool silver-grey and off-white, possibly with dark accents for hair and eyes—suggests Saito working in a more restrained register than his boldly colored temple prints. His grey-toned works often have a particular formal clarity, color contrast eliminated in favor of tonal modulation, the figure emerging from the background through value rather than hue. The result is often his most Japanese-feeling work, closest to the monochrome ink tradition his sosaku-hanga practice departed from.