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Night Rain at the Azuma Shrine (from the series Eight Views of the Environs of Edo)
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art. Free to download, adapt and use — no permission needed.
About this work
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.
Cleveland Museum of Art’s own descriptionCredit lineNight Rain at the Azuma Shrine (from the series Eight Views of the Environs of Edo), mid-1830s. Utagawa Hiroshige (Japanese, 1797–1858). Color woodblock print; sheet: 21.6 x 34.4 cm (8 1/2 x 13 9/16 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Gift of Mrs. Henry S. Upson, 1942.145
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