The Sagami River (Sagamigawa), from the series "Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji (Fuji sanjurokkei)"

The Sagami River flows out of the mountains of western Sagami Province (modern Kanagawa Prefecture) and empties into Sagami Bay, providing one of the classic vantage points from which to view Mount Fuji rising above the inland ridges. In this 1852 landscape print from Utagawa Hiroshige's series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji (Fuji sanjurokkei), the artist gives the Sagamigawa its own sheet, treating Fuji as an organizing presence behind a broad river scene of boats, banks, and small figures of travelers and ferrymen. Hiroshige's Thirty-six Views, completed late in his career and published by Tsutaya Kichizo, deliberately invokes Katsushika Hokusai's earlier and more famous Fuji series of the same name while pursuing a different temperament: cooler, more atmospheric, and more attentive to the wider regional landscape than to figural drama. As an Edo ukiyo-e landscape print, the Sagami River sheet exemplifies that approach. The cone of Fuji is set well back, the river bends through the foreground, and Hiroshige uses bokashi gradation in sky and water to keep the eye moving across the sheet rather than fixing it on the mountain. The Art Institute of Chicago's impression preserves the controlled palette and confident registration that distinguish good early issues. Together with its companion sheets, the print represents the maturity of Hiroshige's relationship with Fuji as a subject he had returned to throughout his career.