Net Fishing at Night on the Sumida River (c. 1800): Art, History and Details

Net Fishing at Night on the Sumida River (c. 1800) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Kitagawa Utamaro (Japanese, c. 1754–1806).

The work and its context

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

In this triptych (a composition of three prints), a nighttime drinking party on a pleasure boat is interrupted by an encounter with a fishing boat on the Sumida River in Edo (now Tokyo). A young man in a bold, checked robe distributes lacquer dishes of sake to his female companions, while another man sits on the boat’s roof, peering at the fisherman’s net. The fisherman struggles to control the net as a woman in the party boat offers her sake dish, her robe pulled open at the neck to enjoy the evening cool.

Object facts

• Title: Net Fishing at Night on the Sumida River
• Date: c. 1800
• Creator attribution: Kitagawa Utamaro (Japanese, c. 1754–1806)
• Culture: Japan, Edo period (1615–1868)
• Type: Print
• Technique: Triptych of color woodblock prints
• Dimensions: Overall: 38.6 x 25.4 cm (15 3/16 x 10 in.)
• Collection: Japanese Art
• Department: Japanese Art
• Accession number: 1916.1116

Collection credit

Gift of Mr. and Mrs. J. H. Wade

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.