Fuji from Mizuchubo 1936

Shotei Takahashi's Fuji from Mizuchubo unfolds with delicate blues and a rosy pink sky, colours softly layered to build the scene. I wonder what it was like for Shotei to create this print? The roofs of the houses cluster in the foreground as though hunkering down for the night. Those warm glowing windows give such a sense of comfort against the backdrop of the sublime, chilly mountain. The peak of Mount Fuji sits in the distance, rendered in cool tones. I find myself thinking about Hokusai. Shotei seems to nod to the master, but he's telling a different story. There is a stillness here, a quiet observation rather than Hokusai's dramatic force. What does it mean to depict a landscape so iconic? How does each artist find their own truth within it? Painters are always responding to one another, aren't they? Like echoes across time. And in that exchange, we discover new ways of seeing, new ways of feeling.