View from Massaki of Suijin Shrine, Uchigawa Inlet, and Sekiya (Massaki hen yori Suijin no mori Uchigawa Sekiya no sato o miru zu), from the series "One Hundred Famous Views of Edo (Meisho Edo hyakkei)"

View from Massaki of Suijin Shrine, Uchigawa Inlet, and Sekiya (Massaki hen yori Suijin no mori Uchigawa Sekiya no sato o miru zu) is a 1857 vertical landscape print by Utagawa Hiroshige from One Hundred Famous Views of Edo (Meisho Edo hyakkei). The view is taken from Massaki, a low bluff on the western bank of the Sumida River north of Edo, looking across the river to the wooded precinct of Suijin Shrine and the village of Sekiya beyond. In the immediate foreground Hiroshige stages a striking near view of a single plum branch in full bloom, its dark trunk and white blossoms occupying nearly half the picture plane. Through the gaps in the blossoms the eye is led down across the river to small boats on the water, the dark green grove of Suijin Shrine on the far bank, and the soft horizon of paddy fields under a band of bokashi pink and pale blue sky. This deliberate juxtaposition of a magnified seasonal detail against a deeply receding landscape is one of the formal signatures of Hiroshige's late Edo ukiyo-e style and would be widely admired and imitated by European post-impressionists. The Art Institute of Chicago impression preserves the delicate registration of the small white blossoms against the dark trunk and the subtle gradations of the distant river and sky.