Kameido Tenjin Shrine · 48 FAMOUS VIEWS OF EDO ·...

Artist: Utagawa Hiroshige II 二代歌川広重 (1826–1869) Title: Kameido Tenjin 龜戸天神 (No. 25) Series: Edo meisho shijūhakkei 江戸名所四十八景 — Forty-eight Famous Views of Edo Publisher: Tsutaya Kichizō 蔦屋吉蔵 (Tsutakichi seal, right margin) Date: 1861 (Bunkyū 1 / Man'en 2) Format: Chūban tate-e, 25 × 17 cm Technique: Woodblock print (nishiki-e), ink and colour on paper Signature: Hiroshige ga 廣重画, in a blue tanzaku cartouche at lower right CONDITION Strong impression and colors are well perserved with minor toning and some soiling, minor trimming on the margins. A small tear to the upper right corner. The paper is firm and subtle. Please check the images! ABOUT THE PRINT Kameido Tenjin, in the low-lying district east of the Sumida River, is one of Edo's two great shrines to Sugawara no Michizane, the Heian scholar deified as Tenjin, patron of learning. Its origins go back to 1646, when an image of Michizane carved from the wood of the sacred "flying plum" (tobiume) at Dazaifu Tenmangū in Kyūshū was enshrined in a small shrine in Kameido village. The grounds were laid out after the Dazaifu model, with a central pond crossed by arched drum bridges (taikobashi). The shrine was famous above all for its wisteria, and in early summer the trellises drew crowds from across the city. The Museum of Applied Arts in Vienna (MAK), which holds an impression of this sheet, notes that the design shows one of the shrine's two drum bridges together with its wisteria. The first Hiroshige had made the same bridge the centre of his celebrated view in One Hundred Famous Views of Edo (1856), a design often linked to the Japanese garden with its arched bridge that Claude Monet later built at Giverny. Hiroshige II placed the shrine directly after the neighbouring Kameido plum garden (No. 24) in this series. ABOUT THE SERIES Edo Meisho Shijūhakkei is a complete set of forty-eight chūban sheets, each pairing one of Edo's famous places with the seasonal feature it was known for; the publisher's seal and the censor's seal alternate from sheet to sheet, and two printing dates are documented — the twelfth month of Man'en 1 (1860) and the first month of Bunkyū 1 (1861). The publisher was Kōeidō, Tsutaya Kichizō. Hiroshige II — born Suzuki Chinpei, pupil and adopted son-in-law of the first Hiroshige — inherited the name in 1858 and, with it, the obligation to keep the studio's famous-places line running. This set belongs to the very last years of Edo: within seven years of its publication the city had a new name and a new government, and the pleasure districts it records were about to change beyond recognition. The chūban format made them affordable souvenirs at the time, which is precisely why they now read as an unusually candid record of where townspeople actually went.

Estimate:£126.47

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