Pond at Inogashira

Pond at Inogashira is a quiet landscape print by Utagawa Hiroshige, set at one of the most beloved water sites in the hills west of Edo. Inokashira Pond, the headwater of the Kanda waterway that supplied the shogunal city, was a destination for pilgrims to its Benzaiten shrine and for seasonal outings under the cherry trees and pines that ringed its shore. Hiroshige, the great chronicler of Edo's surrounding meisho, organizes the composition around the broad, mirror-like expanse of the pond, with the shoreline curving away to direct the eye toward small figures, boats, or shrine architecture in the middle distance. The pond's surface registers both the trees above it and the sky beyond, a doubled landscape that is one of the recurring pleasures of his work. As Edo ukiyo-e of the late Tokugawa period, the print participates in a wider visual culture that turned the suburbs and hinterlands of Edo into objects of contemplation, gentle escape from the dense city. Hiroshige's tonal use of blue, especially the imported synthetic blue that transformed mid-nineteenth-century Edo ukiyo-e, gives water and sky their cool, atmospheric weight, while subtle keyblock detail keeps shoreline foliage legible. The impression preserved at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria (Audrey and Harry Hahn Gift) and indexed on ukiyo-e.org documents the print's role within Hiroshige's larger project of cataloguing the landscape print possibilities around his home city.