MURA · THE COLLECTION · UTAGAWA HIROSHIGE

Kanazawa by Moonlight

A moonlit coastline in three sheets by Utagawa Hiroshige, printed in 1857, the year before his death. The Cleveland Museum of Art catalogues it as "Eight Views of Kanazawa at Night", one of a set of three triptychs on the theme of snow, moon and flowers. It came to the museum in 1921 as a gift from J. H. Wade.

Utagawa Hiroshige · 1857 · Triptych of color woodblock prints · Japan, Edo period (1615–1868) · story written 25 September 2026

What you are looking at

The museum writes: "Late in his career, Hiroshige explored the poetic theme of setsugekka, 'snow, moon, and flowers,' in a set of three triptychs. This panoramic scene shows the autumn moon over Kanazawa, near Tokyo. Hiroshige's contemporaries would have recognized the coastline dotted with villages, fishing boats, and the distinctive double-arched bridge at the bottom right." Mura's catalogue notes the full moon above blue water, small sails and pine-covered islands. The museum gives the sheet size as 35.6 by 24.8 centimetres.

How it was made

The work is a triptych of colour woodblock prints from Japan's Edo period. Hiroshige (1797–1858) is described by Wikipedia as the last great master of the ukiyo-e tradition, whose landscapes were atypical of a genre otherwise devoted to actors, beauties and the pleasure districts. Subtle colour was central to his prints, which were "often printed with multiple impressions in the same area and with extensive use of bokashi (color gradation), both of which were rather labor-intensive techniques". In 1856 he became a Buddhist monk and began his One Hundred Famous Views of Edo; he died in 1858 during the cholera epidemic in Edo. The moon triptych belongs to those final years.

Where it went

The museum's provenance begins with an unknown Paris collection, sold at the Walpole Galleries in New York on 21 January 1921, lot 490, and then the dealer Yamanaka & Co. J. H. Wade gave it to the Cleveland Museum of Art in 1921, accession number 1921.410. It is currently not on view.

Why it is in Mura

It belongs to the Japanese Masters collection with the mood "quiet": a wide, still night, cut into three, that reads as one.