“Nihon Embankment at Yoshiwara,” from the series One Hundred Famous Vi

A long embankment road climbs diagonally across the lower half, crowded with covered palanquins, carts and small figures in travelling clothes. Beside it, a broad pale river and dark clusters of trees recede under a pale sky, with a crescent moon and a V of geese above.

Look closer: A small flock of geese in V formation streams from the upper right toward the moon.

Artist

Utagawa Hiroshige

Date

1857

Medium

Woodblock print; ink and color on paper

Source

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Size

2636 × 3928 px

Credit (appreciated, not required for public-domain works): The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Howard Mansfield Collection, Purchase, Rogers Fund, 1936