| Artist | Utagawa Hiroshige II (二代歌川広重, 1826–1869), signing simply Hiroshige ga (廣重画) |
| Title | No. 19, Matsuchiyama (十九 真乳山) — the hill of the Shōden shrine at Asakusa, in rain |
| Series | Edo Meisho Yonjūhakkei (江戸名所四十八景) — Forty-Eight Famous Views of Edo |
| Date | Bunkyū 1 (1861), first month |
| Publisher | Tsutaya Kichizō (蔦屋吉蔵), Kōeidō |
| Technique | Woodblock print (mokuhanga), polychrome nishiki-e |
| Format | Chūban tate-e — approx. 25 × 18 cm (9⅞ × 7⅛ in.) |
| Marks | Signature in a red cartouche at lower left; title in a fan-shaped cartouche with the number 十九 on the scroll below; aratame date seal and publisher's seal in the right margin, partly caught by trimming |
| Reference | Impressions of this design are held by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (four impressions, incl. 11.20547), the Princeton University Art Museum (x1983-46) and the Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin (1950.1509, as Rain at Matsuchiyama). |
Impression & Colour
Very good. The ruled rain lines print sharp and continuous from the top of the sky to the water, and the keyblock holds well in the temple roofs, the timbers of the bridge and the reeds along the bank. The sky keeps its full bokashi, from near-black at the top edge — where the grain of the block reads through the ink — down to grey over the rooftops; the water carries a second gradation, deep Prussian blue at the bottom edge rising to pale. The small notes of colour that make the design work, the pink of the lamplit windows and the yellow of the umbrellas, are well preserved.
Paper
Age-appropriate. Light, even toning overall, with some handling soiling in the margins and at the corners. The sheet has been slightly trimmed at the right, which has caught the outer edge of the two marginal seals. Very good overall!
⚠ Please examine all photographs carefully — they are part of the condition description.
Matsuchiyama is a small hill on the west bank of the Sumida in Asakusa. On its summit stood the Shōden shrine of Honryūin, a branch temple of Sensō-ji, and its following came above all from merchants and the pleasure quarters — courtesans and others in the entertainment trade made it a place of pilgrimage. Before the land to the east was filled in, the hill served boatmen as a landmark, and from the top one could see Mount Tsukuba to the east and Fuji to the west.
What gave the spot its place in Edo life, though, was the canal at its foot. The San'ya-bori ran into the Sumida beside the hill, and the Imado bridge crossed its mouth. This was where men bound for the Shin-Yoshiwara left the boats that had carried them upriver and walked the last stretch along the Nihon embankment. The waterside here was lined with teahouses and restaurants serving that traffic.
Hiroshige II sets all of this under steady rain. The hill and its temple halls sit dark among the trees at the top of the sheet; below them a row of houses shows lit windows, figures under yellow umbrellas cross the arched bridge, small boats lie tied up along the canal, and two roofed boats wait in the foreground. The rain is cut as straight ruled lines running the full height of the image, over the sky, the trees, the roofs and the water alike.
The Forty-Eight Famous Views of Edo was issued by Tsutaya Kichizō in two batches, the twelfth month of 1860 and the first month of 1861, as a set of forty-eight chūban sheets with a title page. Each design carries its title in a fan-shaped cartouche with its number on the rolled edge of the scroll below. Hiroshige II had inherited the name barely two years earlier: born Shigenobu, he trained under Hiroshige I, married the master's daughter, and took the gō Hiroshige on the older man's death in 1858 — which is why these sheets are signed simply Hiroshige, with no numeral, and are regularly mistaken for the first Hiroshige's work.
In 1857 Hiroshige I had put this same place into One Hundred Famous Views of Edo (no. 34), as Night View of Matsuchiyama and the San'ya Canal: a clear night with stars in the sky and in the water, the restaurants on either side of the Imado bridge lit up, and a geisha following her attendant's lantern along the embankment. Four years later his successor returns to the hill and the canal and takes away the clear sky. The lamps are still lit and people are still crossing the bridge, but they do it under umbrellas, with the whole view behind a curtain of rain.
A design that lives or dies on the cutting and printing of the rain: if the lines break up or blur, the effect is lost. Here they hold across the whole sheet, and the two marginal seals — the aratame date seal and Tsutaya's mark — are present, if trimmed. The design is represented in American museum collections in Boston, Princeton and Oberlin.
Shipping: Sent flat between acid-free tissue and rigid boards, in a reinforced carton, by tracked and insured post. Ships from Germany.
Guarantee: An original Japanese woodblock print of 1861, published by Tsutaya Kichizō. Guaranteed authentic and as described, with full refund if not.