Enjoying the Evening Cool at Ryogoku - A Set of Three (Ryogoku suzumi sanpukutsui)

This Art Institute of Chicago color woodblock print in uncut hosoban triptych format and benizuri-e classification, dated to around 1752, is the complete Ryogoku suzumi sanpukutsui, or Enjoying the Evening Cool at Ryogoku - A Set of Three. The Ryogoku Bridge, spanning the Sumida River and connecting Edo's two banks, was the central summer leisure destination of the city, where residents gathered on humid evenings to enjoy the cool of the river, the fireworks of the seasonal festivals, and the spectacle of crowds promenading along the embankments. Ishikawa Toyonobu's set organizes three discrete hosoban scenes of evening relaxation into a coordinated triptych whose uncut state preserves the original continuous composition. Benizuri-e classification confirms the use of two or three printed color blocks supplying rose pink and grass green over the black-line printing, the new color technique Toyonobu was among the first to popularize. Ryogoku evening-cooling imagery, suzumi, became one of the great recurring subjects of Edo ukiyo-e, returning across every subsequent generation from Harunobu to Kiyonaga to Hokusai and Hiroshige. The Art Institute holding of Toyonobu's uncut Ryogoku triptych is an essential document of mid-Edo summer leisure iconography and of the sanpukutsui form in its full original configuration.