At the Beach

At the Beach departs from Nakayama's signature horse subjects to place human figures within a coastal setting, a subject he returned to periodically throughout his career. The composition likely positions one or more figures — children or women — against the expanse of sea and sky, with the shoreline serving as a horizontal anchor. Nakayama's characteristically vigorous gouge work, which elsewhere captures the musculature and motion of horses, here translates into the rounded forms of bathers and the rhythmic texture of wave and sand. His sosaku-hanga practice meant he cut, printed, and published the block himself, giving him direct control over gradations of blue and grey that suggest coastal atmosphere. Bokashi blending along the horizon line would have been applied by hand during printing on dampened washi, producing the soft tonal transitions characteristic of mid-century Japanese printmaking. The figures are likely rendered with the same physical directness Nakayama brought to his animal work — solid, unidealized, grounded in observed form rather than decorative convention.