Towing a Boat

Fog blankets nearly this entire scene, softening the rocks and blurring the line between water and air. A slender waterfall slides down the cliff face on the left, while rugged boulders push out of the haze and pale green foam swirls in the churning water below. Hidden among all this misty grandeur are the small workers the title points to, standing on a ledge and hauling a boat along by rope. They are so tiny against the towering landscape that you might not notice them right away, which feels like the whole idea. Here nature is vast and endless, and people are barely a speck within it.

Yokoyama Taikan painted this in 1910, and he ranks among the great Japanese artists of the modern age. He helped lead a movement to breathe new life into traditional Japanese painting, mixing classic ink techniques with fresh ideas about light and mood borrowed from the wider world. His soft, hazy manner earned the nickname "morotai," which roughly means vague or blurry. Not everyone praised it back then, and some critics found it frustratingly indistinct. That same dreamy fog is what gives this work its hushed, mysterious feeling, letting the atmosphere carry the story instead of crisp detail.