Suijin Grove and Massaki on the Sumida River

Suijin Grove and Massaki on the Sumida River is a 1856 landscape print by Utagawa Hiroshige from the series One Hundred Famous Views of Edo (Meisho Edo hyakkei). The two locations face one another across the upper Sumida River, north of central Edo, and were among the city's most beloved seasonal destinations. Suijin Grove housed a shrine to the water god and was famous for its ancient cedars and cherry trees; Massaki was a fishing village beneath a steep bluff. Hiroshige's composition treats the meeting of the two banks as a study in distance: a wide blue river curves across the middle of the sheet, populated by drifting boats, and the strip of pink-and-green vegetation along the far shore opens out toward a blank, atmospheric distance. The vertical Edo ukiyo-e landscape print here is exceptionally restrained, with most of its energy in the broad bokashi-graded river and the soft horizon. The print belongs to the most ambitious topographic series of the nineteenth century, in which Hiroshige set out to map both the famous and the quietly beloved corners of his city. An impression of the design is held by the Art Institute of Chicago in the Clarence Buckingham Collection. Together with neighbouring sheets in the series, it forms part of the artist's late memorial to the Edo of his lifetime, completed in the years immediately before his death in 1858.