1834
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Dominant colour
Night Rain at the Azuma Shrine (from the series Eight Views of the Environs of Edo) is a 1834 by Utagawa Hiroshige, a Romanticism work, depicting Rain, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
You see travelers walking under umbrellas near a shrine gate while rain slants across a dark blue night. Hiroshige swapped a Chinese river scene for a Tokyo suburb. The bright blue pigment was new—imported from Europe and suddenly everywhere in Japan. Those ruler-straight white lines are just ink, but they make the rain feel real. Look up *japan, edo period (1615–1868)* to see more of these quiet city nights.
Here Hiroshige reinterprets the traditional Chinese poetic and artistic theme of Eight Views of Xiaoxiang , a scenic region in southeast China . Inspired by “rain at night on the Xiaoxiang,” Hiroshige instead places travelers near Azuma Jinja Shrine in an Edo (present-day Tokyo) suburb. Synthetic blue pigment, imported from the West and wildly popular in the early 1800s, adds vibrancy to the muted landscape. Thin, ruler-straight diagonal lines of white ink evoke the driving rain.
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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