New Year's Pilgrimage to Myohoji Temple in Horinouchi (Horinouchi Myohoji eho mairi no zu)

The center-right sheet of an oban pentaptych depicting the New Year's pilgrimage (eho mairi) to Myohoji Temple in Horinouchi, on the western edge of Edo. Eho mairi was the customary first-of-the-year visit to a temple in the auspicious direction for that year, and Myohoji was one of the most popular destinations for Edo townspeople in the early nineteenth century. The pentaptych format, five sheets joined laterally, allows Toyohiro to render a continuous panoramic scene of crowds streaming toward the temple, and the surviving sheets give a vivid sense of his ability to organize multi-figure compositions across a wide horizontal field. The Art Institute of Chicago dates the impression to circa 1804-1810; the three left sheets are held separately in the same collection.