Night View Of Saruwaka-machi

Title

Night View Of Saruwaka-machi

Artist

Utagawa Hiroshige

Medium

Painting

Description

Night View of Saruwaka-machi by Utagawa Hiroshige. As the full moon rises high in the autumn sky, its rays bathe Saruwaka-machi, the theater district of Edo, with silver light. The moonlight also displays an array of shadows that seem to have a life apart from the gray and black figures that cast them. These shadows are central to the magical quality of this unusual print. Both for Western viewers accustomed to pictures with shadows and for Edo viewers to whom shadows were a curiosity, these particular forms have the similar effect of conjuring up an otherworldly atmosphere. Utagawa Hiroshige Japanese 1797 – 1858, was a Japanese ukiyo-e artist, considered the last great master of that tradition. Hiroshige is best known for his horizontal-format landscape series The Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido and for his vertical-format landscape series One Hundred Famous Views of Edo. The subjects of his work were atypical of the ukiyo-e genre, whose typical focus was on beautiful women, popular actors, and other scenes of the urban pleasure districts of Japan’s Edo period (1603–1868). The popular series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji by Hokusai was a strong influence on Hiroshige’s choice of subject, though Hiroshige’s approach was more poetic and ambient than Hokusai’s bolder, more formal prints. Subtle use of color was essential in Hiroshige’s prints, often printed with multiple impressions in the same area and with extensive use of bokashi (color gradation), both of which were rather labor-intensive techniques.

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January 25th, 2022

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