is a

woodblock print Woodblock printing or block printing is a technique for printing text, images or patterns used widely throughout East Asia and originating in China in antiquity as a method of printing on textiles and later paper. Each page or image is create ...

in the

ukiyo-e Ukiyo-e is a genre of Japanese art which flourished from the 17th through 19th centuries. Its artists produced woodblock prints and paintings Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surfac ...

genre by the Japanese artist

Hiroshige Utagawa Hiroshige (, also ; ja, 歌川広重 ), born Andō Tokutarō (; 1797 – 12 October 1858), was a Japanese ''ukiyo-e'' artist, considered the last great master of that tradition. Hiroshige is best known for his horizontal-format l ...

. It was published in 1857 as part of the series ''

One Hundred Famous Views of Edo ''One Hundred Famous Views of Edo'' (in ja, 名所江戸百景, Meisho Edo Hyakkei) is a series of 119 ukiyo-e prints begun and largely completed by the Japanese artist Hiroshige (1797–1858). The prints were first published in serialized form i ...

'' and is one his best known prints.

''One Hundred Famous Views of Edo''

The picture is part of the series ''

'' which actually features 119 views of 'named places' or 'celebrated spots' in the area that is today

Tokyo Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, with an estimated 37.468 ...

. The series was unique in being the first to feature this many separate landscape views.Research: Hiroshige's One Hundread Famous Views of Edo: Famous Places of Edo
/ref> The series was produced between 1856 and 1859 with

Hiroshige II was a Japanese designer of ukiyo-e art. He inherited the name Hiroshige II following the death in 1858 of his master Hiroshige, whose daughter he married. In 1865 he moved from Edo to Yokohama after dissolving his marriage and began using ...

finishing the series after the death of Hiroshige in 1858. This print was published in the ninth month of 1857. The series was commissioned shortly after the

1855 Edo earthquake The , was the third Ansei Great Earthquake, which occurred during the late-Edo period. It occurred after the 1854 Nankai earthquake, which took place about a year prior. The earthquake occurred at 22:00 local time on 11 November. It had an epi ...

and subsequent fires and featured many of the newly rebuilt or repaired buildings. The prints may have commemorated or helped draw Edo's citizens attention to the progress of the rebuilding.

Description

The print shows a small part of the wooden ''Shin-Ōhashi'' (New Great) bridge over the

Sumida River The is a river that flows through central Tokyo, Japan. It branches from the Arakawa River at Iwabuchi (in Kita-ku) and flows into Tokyo Bay. Its tributaries include the Kanda and Shakujii rivers. It passes through the Kita, Adachi, Arakaw ...

. A boatman punts his log raft towards the Fukagawa timber yards,Sudden Shower Over Shin-Ohashi Bridge and Atake (Ohashi Atake no Yudachi), No. 58 from One Hundred Famous Views of Edo
/ref> and in the background, at the far bank of the river, is a part of Edo known as ''Atake'' after the government ship, the ''Atakemaru'' that was moored there. Two women and four or five men are shown crossing the bridge sheltering under hats, umbrellas or straw capes from a sudden shower of rain. Sudden showers are a recurring theme in ukiyo-e works and here, in what Hiroshige calls "white rain",
/ref> the downpour is depicted using a large number of thin dark parallel lines in 2 directions - a difficult skill in woodblock carving.Sudden Shower over Shin-Ōhashi Bridge and Atake (Ōhashi Atake no yūdachi), from the series One Hundred Famous Views of Edo (Meisho Edo hyakkei)
/ref> The dark clouds are produced using a gradated bokashi technique and vary significantly between prints. The rain, sheltering people and log raft at the centre of the image give the image a sense of movement.

Print variations

The original printing differs considerably from the second version and later reprints. The earliest version has two boats on the far side of the river which are no longer present in later editions, possibly because a grey background block was recut and the boats were forgotten in the process. A mistake made in cutting of the woodblock, where a piece of the bridge piles was accidentally cut away leaving a blank space, was corrected in subsequent prints. Trees in the background are later given more definition while the three houses almost disappear. The title cartouche (top right) was reprinted in three rather than two colours in later prints, which also feature a deep blue bokashi (gradation) applied to the left of the bridge and underneath the piles to the right, and a shadow on the walkway.

Influence

Some of Hiroshige's most popular prints were produced in the tens of thousands at a low individual cost and due to the opening up of Japan after 1853 were popular both in Japan and Europe where they had a huge influence on the future

Impressionist Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement characterized by relatively small, thin, yet visible brush strokes, open composition, emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities (often accentuating the effects of the passage ...

artists.Hiroshige: Master printmaker still making waves
/ref> Whistler produced a number of prints and paintings using a bridge motif in London in the 1870s that were heavily influenced in their composition and subject by Hiroshige's many bridge prints. He used for example non-Western

composition Composition or Compositions may refer to: Arts and literature *Composition (dance), practice and teaching of choreography *Composition (language), in literature and rhetoric, producing a work in spoken tradition and written discourse, to include v ...

in the siting of the bridges, sometimes using no detailed foreground or background objects, scurrying undetailed people on the bridges, large area of

negative space Negative space, in art, is the empty space around and between the subject(s) of an image. Negative space may be most evident when the space around a subject, not the subject itself, forms an interesting or artistically relevant shape, and su ...

and the odd boat on the river. The theme of scurrying people sheltering from the weather under umbrellas that is typical of ''One Hundred Views of Edo'' was an influence on

Félix Buhot Félix Hilaire Buhot (July 9, 1847 - April 26, 1898) was a French painter and illustrator. Biography Félix Buhot is the son of Florentin Louis Buhot and of Anne Appoline Buhot, born Jobelin. With his wife Henriette Johnston, they are the par ...

's ''Le Petit Enterrement'' and Hiroshige's high horizons, areas of blue wash and strong foreground imagery with lack of middle ground influenced

Auguste-Louis Lepère Louis-Auguste Lepère (30 November 1849 – 20 November 1918) was a French painter and etcher. Lepère is also considered a leader in the creative revival of wood engraving in Europe. Biography Louis-Auguste Lepère was born in Paris. At the ag ...

's prints such as ''La Convalescente: Madame Lepère''. Hiroshige Van Gogh 2

Vincent van Gogh Vincent Willem van Gogh (; 30 March 185329 July 1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionism, Post-Impressionist painter who posthumously became one of the most famous and influential figures in Western art history. In a decade, he created about 2 ...

was a major collector of Japanese prints,Van Gogh and Japanese Art, Part 1 - The Bridge in the Rain (after Hiroshige) & Flowering Plum Tree (after Hiroshige)
/ref> decorating his studio with them. He was heavily influenced by these prints, particularly Hiroshige, and made copies of two from the ''One Hundred Famous Views of Edo'', ''

Plum Park in Kameido ''Plum Park in Kameido'' (亀戸梅屋舗, ''Kameido Umeyashiki'') is a woodblock print in the ukiyo-e genre by the Japanese artist Hiroshige. It was published in 1857 as the thirtieth print in the ''One Hundred Famous Views of Edo'' series and ...

'' and this one. He made these copies in order to try out for himself elements he admired such as the cropped composition, blocks of colour with strong outlines and diagonal elements. Van Gogh's painting used brighter colours with greater contrast than the original, conspicuous brushstrokes rather than areas of flat colour, and was also framed with a selection of Van Gogh's approximations to Japanese characters.Bridge in the Rain (after Hiroshige)
/ref> Hiroshige's print was listed by ''

The Observer ''The Observer'' is a British newspaper published on Sundays. It is a sister paper to ''The Guardian'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', whose parent company Guardian Media Group Limited acquired it in 1993. First published in 1791, it is the w ...

''s art critic Laura Cumming as one of the 10 best skies in art. The composer

Geoffrey Poole Geoffrey Richard Poole (born 9 February 1949 in Ipswich, Suffolk) is a contemporary classical composer and educator. His scores range from Western orchestral, choral, vocal, chamber, theatre and contemporary dance genres, to intercultural concep ...

produced the work ''Crossing Ohashi Bridge'' for the

Goldberg Ensemble The Goldberg Ensemble is a string ensemble formed in 1982 in Manchester, UK. The group also performs as a chamber orchestra, a festival opera company, a chamber ensemble, and a contemporary ensemble. Since its formation, the group has toured in ...

and named after Hiroshige's print.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Sudden Shower over Shin-Ohashi bridge and Atake Works by Hiroshige 1857 prints 1857 in Japan Landscape prints Maritime paintings Bridges in art Rain in art