Night Scene at Matsuchiyama

Night Scene at Matsuchiyama is a moonlit landscape print by Utagawa Hiroshige set at Matsuchiyama, the small wooded rise on the bank of the Sumida River downstream from Asakusa. The hill, crowned by Matsuchiyama Shoten, was a famous viewpoint over the river and the Yoshiwara approaches, and it appears repeatedly in Edo ukiyo-e as a place from which to see the city's nightlife in motion. Hiroshige is one of the great printmakers of Edo night: he understood how to use bokashi gradations of indigo and black to suggest evening sky, how to let unprinted paper stand for a lantern's glow, and how to give the river a dark, polished sheen under the moon. In this composition the elevated profile of the hill rises against the night, with the river curving toward the Yoshiwara on one side, distant rooftops in shadow, and small boats moving across the dark water. The mood is contemplative rather than festive, a side of Edo ukiyo-e that Hiroshige cultivated alongside his more famous daylight views. The impression catalogued by ukiyo-e.org from the Audrey and Harry Hahn Gift at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria captures the print's tonal subtlety, and adds to the picture of Hiroshige as the master of the urban landscape print after dark.