Sudden Shower over Shin-Ōhashi Bridge and Atake, 1857
Utagawa Hiroshige
Woodblock print; ink and color on paper · Oban 13 3/8 x 9 1/2 in. (34 x 24.1 cm)
Commuters dash through a sudden downpour rendered in slanting grey lines.
Hiroshige catches figures scurrying across a bridge under a sudden downpour, rain drawn as fine grey lines slicing the whole scene. Van Gogh admired it enough to copy it. Its daring, cropped composition and atmosphere make it a landmark of Japanese printmaking.
What you're looking at
The rain is cut into the block as two sets of fine straight lines crossing at slightly different angles, printed over everything else — the simplest possible way to draw rain and nobody in Europe had thought of it. The far bank is a single flat band of dark with no detail at all. Van Gogh copied this print in oil in 1887, outlining it in a way the original never needed.
On a Frame TV
About 7:10, so the matted file. The clean crop cuts the bridge's diagonal at both ends, which is the composition. Strong graphic contrast; it survives daylight well.
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- 4K master file (3840px+)
- Samsung Frame TV–ready crop
- Phone wallpaper crop
- Printable art card
Public domain · one .zip, no sign-up
More like this
Other works in the collection, starting with Utagawa Hiroshige.
