Abalone Divers off the Coast of Ise, from an Untitled Landscape Series (early 1830s): Art, History and Details

Abalone Divers off the Coast of Ise, from an Untitled Landscape Series (early 1830s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Utagawa Kunisada (Japanese, 1786–1865).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Prolific printmaker Utagawa Kunisada produced this seascape of abalone fishing as part of a series of untitled landscape prints in the early Tenpō era (1830–44). In the coastal city of Ise on Japan’s main island of Honshu, female divers called ama traditionally did the physically demanding job of harvesting shellfish such as abalone. These marine snails are valuable for their edible flesh, and their iridescent inner shell is a source of mother-of-pearl. This print depicts three stages of the harvest: One diver plunges into the water, another holds her breath while prying an abalone off the rocks with a blade, and a third ama conveys her successful harvest to the beaming fishermen on the boat.

Object facts

• Title: Abalone Divers off the Coast of Ise, from an Untitled Landscape Series
• Date: early 1830s
• Creator attribution: Utagawa Kunisada (Japanese, 1786–1865)
• Culture: Japan, Edo period (1615–1868)
• Type: Print
• Technique: color woodblock print
• Dimensions: Overall: 27.4 x 40 cm (10 13/16 x 15 3/4 in.)
• Collection: Japanese Art
• Department: Japanese Art
• Accession number: 1916.944

Collection credit

Anonymous Gift

Further reading listed by the museum

• Bromfield, David. Monet & Japan. Canberra, Seattle: National Gallery of Australia; Distributed in the United States of America by University of Washington Press, 2001.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.