It is a woodblock print picture by Hiroshige Utagawa (1797-1858) in Edo period, Japan, from the Series “One Hundred Famous Views of Edo”. These were created in his last years. This scene shows a cat on the windowsill of a bordello watching people return home from a festival in autumn at the Otori Jinja shrine.
Expression the feeling of being up high by using perspective
Hiroshige Utagawa is famous as a Lyrical landscape painting artist. This is one of the best artwork by him to all cat lovers. The scene explanations may be easier to understand if you read this page in ColBase which is more enthusiastic than other artworks. I don’t know the reason. It may be a lot of inquiries or just a staff’s favorite.
Cats love to stay at high places, and they also love to look out the window. So, this picture of a cat looking out from what appears to be a Bengara kohshi – a lattice window colored with red iron oxide – is completely cat-like.
Hiroshige was a member of Utagawa School whose founder is Utagawa Toyoharu. Here is one of his artwork “Ukie-komoufurankainominatobanri-shokeinozu(浮絵紅毛フランカイノ湊万里鐘響図)“.
At that time, with the publication of Kaitai-Shinsho (“解体新書” Anatomy books translated from Dutch in 1774), realistic art was introduced not only in science but also in paintings. One of them was perspective painting, which was established during the Renaissance. The above painting was created by Toyoharu with it. It looks like an etching, but not, a woodblock print. Toyoharu mastered the technique and used them as backgrounds for paintings which were scale battle drawings and beauties strolling around.
The above painting was created by Hishikawa Moronobu(1618? -1694) who was considered as a founder of Ukiyoe, and below one was created by Utagawa Toyoharu(1735-1814). Both paintings depict beauties walking outside. A different background gives a different impression.
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Toyoharu, Hokusai, and Hiroshige were on the same lineage in the technique, and perhaps due to advances in pigments and woodblock printing technology, it became possible to use it for artistic expression rather than simply as a background.
The title picture shows the bright city in the foreground, the rice fields in the distance beginning to sink into the dark haze, and Mt. Fuji, which is half assimilated into the sobering sky, creating a far more open view. A flock of birds returning to their nests at dusk enhances the poetry of the landscape.
Many people will like this even if they don’t like cats. The bordellos at that time were at most two stories high, so you wouldn’t be able to see the composition from such a high place, right? Let’s not say that.
Reference
- 別冊太陽「浮世絵師列伝」株式会社平凡社
- 「日本美術の歴史」辻惟雄著 東京大学出版会
First posted date : December 16,2022
