Okuno-in near Mt Haruna, Kōzuke Province (Jōshū Haruna san okuno-in)

Utagawa Hiroshige
Japan
1797 – 1858

Okuno-in near Mt Haruna, Kōzuke Province (Jōshū Haruna san okuno-in)
from the series Famous Views in the Provinces (Shokoku meishō)
1840-42
woodblock print, ink and colour on paper
Place made
Edo (Tokyo)
Medium
woodblock print, ink and colour on paper
Edition
later, compare with impression from Musuem of Fine Arts Boston
Dimensions
10.2 x 15.5 cm (image & sheet, yotsugiri)
Credit line
Gift of Brian and Barbara Crisp in memory of their son Andrew 2003
Accession number
20033G43
Signature and date
Signed in block in Japanese, l.r., "Hiroshige ga [Designed by Hiroshige]". Not dated.
Provenance
Created by Utagawa Hiroshige, Edo, 1840-42; Brian and Barbara Crisp collection; gifted to the Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, 2003.
Media category
Print
Collection area
Asian art - Japan

  • This print depicts the Okuno-in area, near Mount Haruna in Kōzuke province (present-day Gunma prefecture), in central Japan. It is unlikely that the artist travelled to this location but instead may have created it from guidebooks of the sixty-nine stations of the Nakasendō Road, which ran inland from Edo through Kōzuke province to Kyoto.

    Utagawa Hiroshige is recognised as a master of the ukiyo-e woodblock printing tradition, having created eight thousand print designs of everyday life and landscape in Edo-period (1615–1868) Japan with a splendid, saturated ambience.  

    Russell Kelty, Curator of Asian Art