Moonlit Night in Nakasu

Held in the Utsunomiya Museum of Art in Tochigi prefecture, Moonlit Night in Nakasu (中洲月夜の図, 1878) is among the most atmospheric of Takahashi Yuichi's landscape oils and one of his most accomplished night scenes. The horizontal canvas shows the Nakasu sandbar in the Sumida River near central Tokyo — the small island in midstream long associated with riverside pleasure houses, with restaurants and with the geisha and boatmen of the lower town — bathed in the soft, cold light of a high moon. The dark river runs across the foreground, the sandbar with its low buildings occupies the middle distance, and the moon rises in a quiet, indeterminate sky.