Sumidagawa watashi no zu, from the series Tōto meisho zue

Sumidagawa watashi no zu, from the series Toto meisho zue, illustrates one of the principal ferry crossings on the Sumida River, the great artery of Edo. Utagawa Hiroshige designed many views of the Sumida across his career, returning to its banks and bridges with the persistence of a designer for whom the river was both a familiar subject and an inexhaustible test of compositional invention. In this sheet a flat-bottomed ferry crosses the river with passengers seated and standing, the boatman poling against the current, while on the far bank trees and buildings recede into atmospheric distance. The Toto meisho zue, a survey of the famous places of the eastern capital, gave Hiroshige a structure within which to gather such intimate riverside moments into a connected portrait of the city. Bokashi gradations in the water and sky carry the time of day, and the careful spacing of small figures along the banks anchors the scale of the river. As an Edo ukiyo-e landscape print, the design exemplifies Hiroshige's understanding that the social texture of a place is inseparable from its geography. The Harvard Art Museums impression preserves the clarity of the keyblock outlines and the layered color blocks. Among Hiroshige's many Sumida designs, this ferry view is a quiet, characteristic example.