Net Fishing at Night on the Sumida Riverc. 1800
In this triptych (a composition of three prints), a nighttime drinking party on a pleasure boat is interrupted by an encounter with a fishing boat on the Sumida River in Edo (now Tokyo). More about this work
About this work
In this triptych (a composition of three prints), a nighttime drinking party on a pleasure boat is interrupted by an encounter with a fishing boat on the Sumida River in Edo (now Tokyo). A young man in a bold, checked robe distributes lacquer dishes of sake to his female companions, while another man sits on the boat’s roof, peering at the fisherman’s net. The fisherman struggles to control the net as a woman in the party boat offers her sake dish, her robe pulled open at the neck to enjoy the evening cool.
Text from the Cleveland Museum of Art.
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.
- Triptych
- Three sheets designed to sit side by side and read as one wide picture.
Kitagawa Utamaro
Japanese, c.1753–1806
Utamaro trained with the painter Toriyama Sekien and rose to fame in the 1790s with the support of the publisher Tsutaya Jūzaburō. He is best known for his half-length portraits of women, the ōkubi-e or “large head” pictures, which give close attention to expression, gesture and the texture of hair and fabric. He also produced finely observed books of insects, shells and birds. In 1804 he was punished by the authorities for designs depicting the warlord Toyotomi Hideyoshi.
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 Cleveland Museum of Art 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
- 1916.1116
- Credit
- Courtesy of the Cleveland Museum of Art
- Type
- Department
- Japanese Art
- Licence
- CC0 1.0 Universal
- Museum record
- See it on the museum’s site
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