In early spring, people in Edo (now Tokyo) flocked to see the plum blossoms at a garden in Kameido. One ancient tree there was so famous it had a name: the Sleeping Dragon Plum.

Hiroshige puts us right up against a dark, twisting branch, so close that it cuts across the picture. Behind it, small figures stroll among the trees under a sky that fades from red to white.

That bold, cropped view was startling to European eyes. In 1887, Vincent van Gogh made a painted copy of this print, adding Japanese characters around the border — one of several Japanese prints he copied. Japanese woodblock prints transformed how artists in Europe thought about composition, and this one is a perfect example of why.