Water in Venice

A narrow Venetian canal recedes between two tall buildings rendered in deep indigo-blue, their walls striped with dark vertical and diagonal lines suggesting shadow, brick joints, and mooring poles. A gondola with a single standing figure occupies the pale blue-white strip of water at the canal's vanishing point, beneath a pale sky and a distant building washed in muted green with rows of small dark windows. This woodblock print, "Water in Venice" by Tadashige Ono, uses a tall, narrow composition and a restrained palette of blue, green, and cream to create a quiet, shadowed mood.