Evening Snow on Mt. Hira (Hira no bosetsu), No. 6 from the series "Eight Views of Omi"
- Date:
- c. 1716/36
- Medium:
- Hand-colored woodblock print; hosoban, urushi-e
- Source:
- Art Institute of Chicago
Number six from Shigenaga's Eight Views of Omi, this hosoban urushi-e in the Art Institute of Chicago depicts Hira no bosetsu, evening snow on Mount Hira, the range that rises west of Lake Biwa and that catches the year's first heavy snows. The bosetsu (evening snow) theme is one of the most quietly poetic of the eight Xiao-Xiang derived subjects, prizing the muffled stillness of snowfall at dusk over any dramatic incident. Shigenaga's handling, in the hosoban format, works the wintry mood into a small vertical compass through a careful use of negative space, leaving large areas of the sheet to suggest the snow-laden air, while figures and a few architectural elements anchor the foreground. Urushi-e brushwork enhances the keyblock impression with hand-applied lacquer ink and beni, and in good impressions the white of the unprinted paper carries the snow effect with surprising power. The Chicago series, of which this sheet is one, is among the more complete Shigenaga Eight Views of Omi groups in any Western collection and demonstrates the artist's ability to sustain a coherent visual program across eight prints, each with its own atmospheric character.
18th century
Woodblock print; hosoban, sumizuri-e
18th century
Hand-colored woodblock print; hosoban, urushi-e
1754
Color woodblock print; left sheet of hosoban triptych, benizuri-e
c. 1716/36
Hand-colored woodblock print; hosoban, beni-e
Evening Snow on Mt. Hira (Hira no bosetsu), No. 6 from the series "Eight Views of Omi" was created by Nishimura Shigenaga (西村重長) in c. 1716/36.
Evening Snow on Mt. Hira (Hira no bosetsu), No. 6 from the series "Eight Views of Omi" depicts winter.
