Greenfields by Thomas Tomizo Nagai

At lower left, a tight cluster of houses is set along the same plane as a plateau running to the right; in the distance are gentle hills of a comparable height, and beyond that taller mountains in blue. In the basin between them we behold the broad green fields that give Nagai’s monoprint its name, a space that with a change of color could be a lake. Tiny dots of yellow and orange across the fields may indicate houses on the opposite side, in which case the basin is massive. Subtle etchings in the paint convey ground contours, brush, and tree foliage—the grass fields are a fine-grained texture of their own.