Pleasure Boats on the Sumida River beneath Shin-Ōhashi Bridge
- Date:
- ca. 1792
- Medium:
- Pentaptych of woodblock prints; ink and color on paper
- Source:
- Metropolitan Museum of Art
Pleasure Boats on the Sumida River beneath Shin-Ōhashi Bridge captures the leisure rituals of late eighteenth-century Edo, where the Sumida River served as a stage for cooling summer evenings, moon viewing, and quiet flirtation. Chobunsai Eishi places his elegantly attired figures along the gunwales of low pleasure craft that drift beneath the broad span of Shin-Ōhashi, one of the bridges that connected the bustling commercial districts to the entertainment zones of the eastern bank. The composition opens outward across the water, allowing the architecture of the bridge to frame the scene without dominating it, an arrangement that highlights Eishi's enduring interest in atmosphere over incident. Trained in the conservative Kano studio before turning to popular print design, he carries into this Edo bijin-ga the restrained palette, careful spatial intervals, and refined draftsmanship of his classical apprenticeship. The women aboard the boats wear softly patterned robes whose curves echo the river's gentle current, and their gestures, whether tilting a fan or steadying a sake cup, are unhurried and dignified. As Kano-trained ukiyo-e at its most lyrical, the design exchanges the noisy crowds favored by some contemporaries for an idealized vision of riverine pleasure suited to the cultured townspeople and samurai patrons who collected his work. The Metropolitan Museum of Art preserves an impression of this print, where one can study the delicate keyblock and the soft, almost watercolor-like tonal washes that Eishi favored. The result is a quintessential expression of his style: an Edo subject rendered with aristocratic poise, in which Chobunsai Eishi treats common leisure as something nearly ceremonial.
c. 1790
Color woodblock print; oban
c. 1789/95
Color woodblock print; right sheet of oban triptych
c. 1791/92
Color woodblock print; chuban
c. 1793
Color woodblock print; oban
Woodblock print
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1947
Color woodblock print; oban
1926
Color woodblock print; oban
1930
Color woodblock print; oban
Pleasure Boats on the Sumida River beneath Shin-Ōhashi Bridge was created by Chōbunsai Eishi (鳥文斎栄之) in ca. 1792.
Pleasure Boats on the Sumida River beneath Shin-Ōhashi Bridge depicts bridges.