Utagawa Hiroshige – Sagami Province: The Caves at Enoshima, 1853 | Giclée Print

Low tide at Enoshima. The sea has drawn back far enough to walk in, and Hiroshige puts us down at the waterline, looking up at the eroded rock and into the dark mouth of the cave. Above the cliff, a few wind-bent pines; across the bay, Mount Fuji, pale and small under a band of early pink.

The caves — iwaya — were the reason people made the crossing to the island: inside was a shrine to Benzaiten, and it could be reached only when the tide allowed. Hiroshige leaves the pilgrims out. What is left is water, rock and the black opening, stacked up the tall sheet of the ōban format he used throughout this series.

Which impression. Woodblocks wear and pigments fade, so no two surviving sheets look alike. This one is the Art Institute of Chicago's, the gift of Mr. and Mrs. Harold G. Henderson. The deep water is still dark blue and the graded sky above the horizon has kept its pink — the two colours that go first.

What this is. A giclée reproduction printed with pigment inks. It is not a woodblock print and is not sold as one — a woodblock print is pulled by hand from cut cherry blocks, and the good impressions are in museums.

Scale
Original: 37 × 25.3 cm / 14.6 × 10.0 in — Art Institute of Chicago
40 × 50 cm / 15.7 × 19.7 in — Original size, 1:1
50 × 70 cm / 19.7 × 27.6 in — Enlarged, 1.7× original

At original size the sheet is the ōban a buyer in 1853 held in his hands. Enlarged, the surf comes up to the size it suggests and the grain of the block shows in the flat blue — a different picture, and a deliberate one.

The sheet is reproduced whole, including the title cartouche and the publisher's seals. Nothing is cropped away but the museum's mount.

Provenance
Utagawa Hiroshige (1797–1858), Sagami Province: Entrance to the Caves at Enoshima (Sagami, Enoshima iwaya no kuchi), from the series Famous Places in the Sixty-odd Provinces (Rokujūyoshū meisho zue), 1853; colour woodblock print, ōban, 37 × 25.3 cm.
The Art Institute of Chicago, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Harold G. Henderson, Acc. No. 1965.962.
Public domain. The museum publishes its digitisation under CC0.

The print
Giclée on 200 gsm FSC-certified fine art paper, twelve pigment inks. White border, optical centre. The paper tone of the original is kept, not corrected. Unframed. Shipped rolled in a tube.