Gurnard (Kanagashira), Right-Eye Flounder (Konoa-garei) and Bamboo Grass (Sasa), from the series A Shoal of Fishes (Uo-zukushi)

Gurnard (Kanagashira), Right-Eye Flounder (Konoa-garei) and Bamboo Grass (Sasa), from A Shoal of Fishes (Uo-zukushi), is one of the most striking pairings in Utagawa Hiroshige's late still-life series. The flounder, drawn flat against the picture plane with its asymmetric eyes and finely patterned skin, lies above the elongated body of a gurnard whose spiny head and broad pectoral fins are rendered with naturalist exactness. Sprigs of bamboo grass crossing beneath the fish suggest the way such a catch might be wrapped for market in summer. The Uo-zukushi project gathered such pairings with kyoka verses to create a series that combined ichthyological accuracy, decorative grace, and literary wit. Although the series departs from the Edo ukiyo-e landscape print genre for which Hiroshige is best known, the pictorial logic is identical: confident outline, restrained color blocking, and a confident handling of negative space. The Harvard Art Museums impression preserves the clean keyblock work and the layered colors that distinguish good states from the multiple later reprints of the series. For collectors and natural-history scholars alike, the gurnard-and-flounder sheet remains one of the more demanding compositions in the project, since Hiroshige had to reconcile two fish of strikingly different body plans within a single balanced design.