Fireworks at Ryōgoku (Ryōgoku hanabi), from the series One Hundred Famous Views of Edo (Meisho Edo hyakkei)1858
A single firework bursts in a shower of sparks high above the dark Sumida River, while below, the Ryōgoku Bridge is crowded with spectators and pleasure boats gather on the water. More about this work
About this work
A single firework bursts in a shower of sparks high above the dark Sumida River, while below, the Ryōgoku Bridge is crowded with spectators and pleasure boats gather on the water. The summer fireworks at Ryōgoku were among Edo’s most popular festivities. Hiroshige captures the moment with striking economy, letting the deep blue night sky dominate the tall sheet. The print belongs to One Hundred Famous Views of Edo, the series he was still working on when he died in 1858.
Written by Ochre Editions.
What you’re looking at
A work made of color woodblock print; oban.
Description from the Art Institute of Chicago.
How it was made
- Colour woodblock print
- In Japan these were a team effort. The artist drew the design, a carver cut it into cherry-wood blocks, one block for each colour, and a printer brushed on the pigment and rubbed each sheet by hand. Full-colour prints of this kind were called nishiki-e, “brocade pictures”, from the 1760s on.
- Ōban
- The standard large Japanese print size, about 38 × 25 cm.
Utagawa Hiroshige
Japanese, 1797–1858
Hiroshige was born into a family of Edo fire wardens and trained under Utagawa Toyohiro. His breakthrough came in the early 1830s with The Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō, scenes along the highway between Edo and Kyoto. He went on to design thousands of landscapes attentive to weather, season and the hour of day, ending with One Hundred Famous Views of Edo, still unfinished at his death. Van Gogh made a painted copy of one of its views, Plum Garden at Kameido.
Written by Ochre Editions.
Ukiyo-e
Japanese woodblock prints of the floating world: actors, courtesans, landscapes and the sea.
Rights and the museum’s record
Public domain. The Art Institute of Chicago has dedicated this image to the public domain under CC0, so anyone may copy, adapt and use it, for any purpose, without asking. Our prints and files are reproductions made from the museum’s image; the museum doesn’t endorse them.
- Object number
- 1925.3734
- Credit
- Courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago
- Type
- Department
- Arts of Asia
- Licence
- CC0 1.0 Universal
- Museum record
- See it on the museum’s site
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