The road to Pompei

A second treatment of the same Italian motif, reflecting the sosaku-hanga practice of issuing one composition in multiple states or color variations rather than a fixed commercial edition. Where shin-hanga publishers standardized print runs for the export market, creative printmakers often re-cut or re-inked blocks to produce closely related but distinct impressions, each treated as an autonomous work. This version of the road approaching Pompeii likely differs from its companions in palette—perhaps cooler in shadow, warmer in stone, or more emphatic in the bokashi gradation along the road's edge. The European subject locates the print in Ono's later career, when the urban-worker imagery of the 1930s had given way to landscapes drawn from travel and to historical and literary themes. The mokuhanga technique—water-based pigments, washi paper, baren-rubbed impressions—remained constant across his shifting subject matter and across the half-century of his working life.