Evening Glow at Setta (Setta no yūshō), from the series Eight Views of Lake Biwa (ōmi hakkei)
- Date:
- Late Edo period, circa 1800-1802
- Medium:
- Ukiyo-e woodblock print in the "chūban" format; ink and color on paper
- Source:
- Harvard Art Museums
Evening Glow at Setta (Setta no yūshō), from the series Eight Views of Lake Biwa (Ōmi hakkei), is a landscape [ukiyo-e](/glossary/ukiyo-e) print designed by Katsushika Hokusai around 1800 and held in the Harvard Art Museums. The series transposes the classical Chinese set of eight scenic views, originally devised for the area around Lake Dongting, onto eight famous sites surrounding Lake Biwa in Ōmi Province east of Kyoto, a localization that had been firmly established in Japanese painting since the medieval period.
Setta, today written Seta, lies at the southern outlet of Lake Biwa where the great Seta no Karahashi bridge crosses the Seta River. The view at evening glow is the conventional Setta theme within the eight views, picturing the long arc of the bridge with low rays of sunset light raking across the water. Hokusai handles the composition in his early landscape manner, before the full Prussian blue palette of the Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji had reshaped Edo ukiyo-e. Pale washes of warm orange and pink along the horizon contrast with the cool indigo of the lake, and the bridge stretches in a long horizontal that organizes the entire pictorial field.
Small figures of travelers and boats animate the scene without overwhelming its lyrical mood. The reference to the Ōmi hakkei tradition would have been immediately legible to Edo viewers, evoking centuries of poetic and painterly engagement with each of the eight sites.
As an early ukiyo-e print in Katsushika Hokusai's career, Evening Glow at Setta documents the artist's longstanding interest in classical scenic schemes and demonstrates the formal foundations from which his later landscape revolution in Edo ukiyo-e would emerge.
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Color woodblock print; shikishiban, surimono
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Color woodblock print; oban
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n.d.
Woodblock print; ishizuri-e, section of harimaze sheet
Curated cross-cuts that include this print.
Evening Glow at Setta (Setta no yūshō), from the series Eight Views of Lake Biwa (ōmi hakkei) was created by Katsushika Hokusai (葛飾北斎) in Late Edo period, circa 1800-1802.
Evening Glow at Setta (Setta no yūshō), from the series Eight Views of Lake Biwa (ōmi hakkei) depicts landscapes.