Hiroshige: Beauties watching a firework
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Hiroshige: Beauties watching a firework
Move your mouse over image or click to enlarge
Hiroshige: Beauties watching a firework
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Utagawa Hiroshige (1797-1858)

Three elegant ladies enjoying themselves on a large river boat named Kawachi-maru during the summer fireworks over the Sumidagawa. To the left two other ladies in a boat, one of them playing the shamisen. In the background the crowded Ryôgoku bridge and countless more pleasure boats.

Title: Tôto Ryôgoku nôryô hanabi no zu (Enjoying the evening cool and the fireworks at Ryôgoku in the Eastern Capital, i.e. Edo)

Signature: Hiroshige ga

Publisher: Fujiokaya Keijirô (Fujikei, Shôrindô), Edo

Censors: Hama, Kinugasa

Date: 1847/48

Size: Oban triptych, 37 x 75 cm

Excellent impression with strongly visible wood grain und beautiful bokashi gradation. Some colour fading. The three separate sheets untrimmed and unbacked. Left sheet unobtrusively foxed, left and right sheets with some smaller wormholes. Corners partly faintly creased. Overall a lovely condition of this scarce triptych by Hiroshige.

Illustrated in: Tamba, The Art of Hiroshige, Tokio 1965, p. 12, No. 21; Sievernich/Budde (ed.), Das Buch der Feuerwerkskunst, Nördlingen 1987, p. 201, No. 11/52. Cf. also Honolulu Museum of Art Nos. 05029-05031.

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