1833
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Evening Snow at Kambara (number sixteen of the series Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido) is a 1833 by Utagawa Hiroshige, a Romanticism work, depicting Snow, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
A quiet road winds through a snowy village at dusk. Rooftops and trees wear thin white blankets, and tiny flakes drift down against a pale sky. Kambara almost never gets snow, so Hiroshige carved each flake by hand—little shapes cut from the woodblock so the paper stays white. It’s one of his first prints to show falling snow this way. To see how other artists painted winter, look up *Utagawa Hiroshige (Japanese, 1797–1858)*.
The coastal town of Kambara rarely experiences snowfall. Illustrating falling snow is particularly suited to woodblock prints. The snowflakes are created by carving their shapes out of the woodblock. When the surface of the block is inked and printed, the carved areas are represented by the unprinted white paper. This print may be the first by Hiroshige to depict falling snow.
Read the full account in the museum source.
Utagawa Hiroshige (歌川 広重) or Andō Hiroshige (安藤 広重), born Andō Tokutarō (安藤 徳太郎; 1797 – 12 October 1858), was a Japanese ukiyo-e artist, considered the last great master of that tradition.
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