Night Rain at the Paulownia Grove at Akasaka (Akasaka Kiribatake uchu yukei), from the series "One Hundred Famous Views of Edo (Meisho Edo hyakkei)" (1859): Artwork and History

Night Rain at the Paulownia Grove at Akasaka (Akasaka Kiribatake uchu yukei), from the series "One Hundred Famous Views of Edo (Meisho Edo hyakkei)" (1859) is in the Art Institute of Chicago collection. The museum lists its creator attribution as Utagawa Hiroshige II (Shigenobu) Japanese, 1826-1869.

The work and its context

The Art Institute of Chicago describes the work:

After Utagawa Hiroshige died in 1858, this print was issued with the rest of the series in 1859. Many scholars believe that the blocks for one of the original views were lost, and that Hiroshige’s successor, Hiroshige II, created this design to replace it. The diagonal lines in the composition and the careful gradation of the mist and distant trees suggest that the young artist wanted to differentiate himself from Hiroshige.

Object facts

• Title: Night Rain at the Paulownia Grove at Akasaka (Akasaka Kiribatake uchu yukei), from the series "One Hundred Famous Views of Edo (Meisho Edo hyakkei)"
• Date: 1859
• Artist attribution: Utagawa Hiroshige II (Shigenobu) Japanese, 1826-1869
• Place of origin: Japan
• Medium: Color woodblock print; oban
• Dimensions: 35.1 × 24.5 cm (13 13/16 × 9 5/8 in.)
• Type: Print
• Department: Arts of Asia
• Reference number: 1961.159

Collection credit

Gift of Chester W. Wright

View the original

Explore the artwork in the Art Institute's collection, including its image and the museum's current catalogue details.

The description above is credited to the Art Institute of Chicago and reused under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0; HTML formatting has been converted to plain text. Other catalogue metadata and the public-domain image are provided under CC0 1.0.