Meadow

A second print under the same title, likely a separate composition or variant impression rather than a duplicate. Sosaku-hanga artists often treated subjects in informal series, returning to the same motif across different plates to work out compositional or tonal alternatives that share a name but not an image. The meadow as a recurring point of departure suited Ono's practice: a loosely structured subject lets the carving and printing do most of the work of giving the sheet its character, with grass texture, distant treeline, and sky each handled through a different combination of grain, gouge, and bokashi gradation. Compared with the urban prints that defined his 1930s reputation, meadow images sit closer to the lyric landscape line that broadened the sosaku-hanga repertoire after the war. Holding two or three Meadow prints together — as some institutional groupings do — turns the subject into a study in how much variation the artist can draw from a quiet motif.