Gazing at Mt. Fuji on the Horse

A [surimono](/glossary/surimono) showing a figure on horseback gazing at Mount Fuji, a deluxe privately commissioned print that combines the classical motif of the sacred mountain with the equestrian dignity of a traveler at rest. Fuji as a subject was already by the early nineteenth century the most heavily worked motif in Japanese visual art, and Toyohiro's treatment here, in the small, refined surimono format, is the opposite of bombastic, leaning instead on quiet symbolic resonance and on the deluxe printing effects (likely metallic pigments and embossing in the original) that distinguished surimono from commercial prints. The Art Institute of Chicago dates the impression broadly to the nineteenth century, consistent with Toyohiro's late period of surimono production.