Night Rain at the Double-Shelf Stand, from the series Eight Parlor Views (Zashiki hakkei)ca. 1766
The Eight Views of the Xiao and Xiang Rivers, a classic theme of Chinese and Japanese landscape painting, are wittily transposed into a domestic interior in Harunobu’s series Eight Parlor Views; here… More about this work
About this work
The Eight Views of the Xiao and Xiang Rivers, a classic theme of Chinese and Japanese landscape painting, are wittily transposed into a domestic interior in Harunobu’s series Eight Parlor Views; here the ‘night rain’ of the classic theme is evoked beside a double-shelved stand used for tea. Such clever parodies, known as mitate, delighted the educated townspeople of Edo. This is an impression of the first edition, made around 1766, just as Harunobu and his collaborators were pioneering full-colour printing.
Written by Ochre Editions.
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.
- Chūban
- A medium Japanese print size, about 26 × 19 cm, roughly half an ōban.
Suzuki Harunobu
Japanese, 1725–1770
Harunobu was the first great master of the full-colour woodblock picture, or nishiki-e, which developed in Edo around 1765 out of privately commissioned calendar designs. Working mostly in the small chūban format, he favoured slender, youthful figures in intimate scenes, often with subtle allusions to classical poetry. In the few years before his death he produced hundreds of designs, and his delicate style shaped the work of a generation.
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 Met 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
- JP698
- Credit
- Courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art
- Type
- Prints
- Department
- Asian Art
- Licence
- CC0 1.0 Universal
- Museum record
- See it on the museum’s site
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More by Suzuki Harunobu
All their works
Close in colour
