Lower Meguro Fields Poster 'Shimomeguro'

Hokusai print of the fields at Lower Meguro, farmers and hawkers on green hills

Green hills, a farm, and the mountain between two slopes. This is Hokusai's view of Lower Meguro, then a village outside Edo: rounded hills in green and yellow roll across the picture with thatched farm roofs in the folds, a farmer bends at the left, two hawkers with a bird walk a path at the right, pines stand on a ridge, and Fuji sits small and white in the gap between the hills. It is the most rural view in the series, and one of the gentlest.

It is the print for a person who wants the countryside, and it is the one that goes in a kitchen.

The name, Shimomeguro, is Lower Meguro, the village of the print's title, now a district of Tokyo, and the picture is what it looked like before.

The print is reproduced from the woodblock print on a textured canvas, stretched round a wooden frame with the image wrapping the edges, so it hangs without a frame and without glass. The colours are the print's own: the deep Prussian blue, the cream of the paper, the greens and the rose of the sky. The cartouche with the series title and the artist's signature is printed in the corner, as on the Edo sheet.

Hang it on a single nail at eye level, alone or in a row of three with two others from the series, which is how they look best. It goes above a desk, a sofa or a bed.

The hawkers are the detail: two men on the path at the right, one with a hawk on his fist, on their way to the hunt, and they are drawn small against the hill. The hills are drawn in bands of green and yellow that curve like waves, and the roofs sit in the troughs.

Every print in the collection is photographed on the same wall at the same scale, so the pages compare.

Dust with a soft dry cloth or a brush; do not wet it. Keep it out of direct sun, which fades the blue over years, and away from a radiator, which loosens the canvas.

From across a room it is a picture of green hills. From close the hills show their bands, the roofs their thatch, and the hawk its perch. It is the print for a kitchen and a person who grew up in a valley.

Three sizes: 40 by 60 cm, 50 by 75 cm and 60 by 90 cm. The smallest suits a shelf or a small wall, the middle a desk, the largest a wall on its own. The image is the same in all three.