Evening Glow of the Lamp (later edition)

Evening Glow of the Lamp (later edition), dated about 1766 and held in the Art Institute of Chicago (artwork 88968), is a print after Suzuki Harunobu's design from one of his most celebrated series, the Zashiki Hakkei or Eight Indoor Scenes. In the parent series, the eight canonical Views of Xiao and Xiang are transposed from a Chinese river landscape into the rooms of an Edo townhouse, and each scene supplies a domestic analogue for the classical motif. "Evening Glow of the Lamp" plays on the topos of "Evening Glow at a Fishing Village," exchanging the sun setting over distant water for the warm light of a paper lantern set down beside a young woman in an interior. The Art Institute of Chicago records this impression as a later edition, meaning that it was pulled from Harunobu's original or near-contemporary blocks at a date after the first issue. Such posthumous and later restrikes were common in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and testify to the lasting commercial appeal of his designs. Even in a later impression, the print retains the core features of his contribution to nishiki-e and Edo bijin-ga: the slender, idealized figure, the careful registration of multiple polychrome blocks, and the use of an interior detail to evoke a classical landscape motif. The Art Institute's online record at artic.edu under artwork 88968 catalogues the print as Evening Glow of the Lamp (later edition) after Suzuki Harunobu.