Yokoyama Misao left his native Niigata Prefecture early in his adolescence to study oil painting in Tokyo. By the age of nineteen, however, he had become interested in traditional Japanese painting while a student at the Kawabata Art School. In 1940 his work was included in an exhibition of the Seiryu-sha, an association of younger Nihonga artists founded in 1929 by Kawabata Ryushi (1885-1966) and others who deemed the Nihon Bijutsuin reactionary and confining. Although his painting career was interrupted by military service in China and by a post-war term in a Siberian prisoner-of-war camp, he eventually returned to the Seiryu-sha exhibitions, won prizes for his work, and was a member of the group until 1962.

Working without the support of an artists' organization thereafter, Yokoyama prepared for individual exhibitions of his work and in 1965 began teaching at Tama Fine Arts College where he soon became a full professor. A stroke in 1971 left him partially paralyzed and he painted with his left hand until his death at the age of 53 two years later.

Another painting by Yokoyama Misao, The Bridge was Sold in these Rooms, lot 185, on October 25, 1994 in a sale of Japanese Modern and Contemporary Art.