Image source: Wikimedia Commons (Public domain). View source
Plum Park in Kameido
Utagawa Hiroshige · Naïve, folk & other
- Artist
- Utagawa Hiroshige (1797–1858)
- Date
- 1857
- Dimensions
- Ōban format (about 36 x 24 cm)
- Medium
- Colour woodblock print
- Location
- Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, Netherlands (this impression)
Plum Park in Kameido shows the dark, twisting branch of an old plum tree in bloom filling the foreground, seen so close that it seems to cut across the whole picture. Behind it, small figures admire other blossoming trees under a sky glowing red at the horizon.
A closer look
The print belongs to Hiroshige's last great series, One Hundred Famous Views of Edo, published between 1856 and 1858. The plum garden at Kameido, on the eastern edge of Edo (today's Tokyo), was famous for a tree called the Sleeping Dragon Plum, whose branches touched the ground and rooted again. Hiroshige places us right behind the trunk, using a bold, close-up viewpoint that makes the distant scene look tiny. The flat areas of colour, the dramatic cropping and the red-to-white sky are typical of Japanese woodblock prints at their height.
