Shimosuwa, from Sixty-Nine Stations of the Kisokaidō1835–38
This print shows travelers enjoying a meal at an inn, with the innkeeper looking pleased at the guests’ enthusiasm. More about this work
About this work
This print shows travelers enjoying a meal at an inn, with the innkeeper looking pleased at the guests’ enthusiasm. In the background, another traveler is gratefully relaxing in a wooden tub filled with hot natural spring water, having discarded his robe next to the bath. Shimosuwa was the only stop along the Kisokaidō—a 534-kilometer (332-mile) road running from Nihonbashi in Edo (now Tokyo) to Sanjō Ōhashi in Kyoto—with a natural hot spring. The print series was a collaboration between Utagawa Hiroshige and Keisai Eisen (1790–1848).
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.
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 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
- 1985.322
- 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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