Utagawa Hiroshige – Asakusa Ricefields and Torinomachi Festival, 1857 | Framed Giclée Print

A white cat sits on a windowsill with its back to us, looking out. Beyond the lattice: rice fields, a line of low roofs, geese in the sky and Mount Fuji, small and pale. On the sill behind the cat lie a hairpin and a folded paper — the room is a brothel in the Yoshiwara, and the guest has left at dawn.

Hiroshige tells the whole story by leaving the people out. It is the most quietly modern picture in the series: a framed view, a foreground object cut off by the edge, an animal standing in for everyone who is not shown.

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 Chester W. Wright, and it is an early, unfaded pull: the indigo band along the top is deep, the pink dawn light above the horizon is intact, and the greens in the fields have not gone yellow.

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: 35.9 × 24.8 cm / 14.1 × 9.8 in — Art Institute of Chicago
40 × 50 cm / 15.7 × 19.7 in — Original size, 1:1

At original size the sheet is exactly the ōban format a buyer in Edo held. 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), Asakusa Ricefields and Torinomachi Festival (Asakusa tanbo Torinomachi mōde), from the series One Hundred Famous Views of Edo (Meisho Edo hyakkei), 1857; colour woodblock print, ōban, 35.9 × 24.8 cm.
The Art Institute of Chicago, Gift of Chester W. Wright, Acc. No. 1961.147.
Public domain. The museum publishes its digitisation under CC0.

The frame
Giclée on 200 gsm FSC-certified fine art paper, twelve pigment inks, white border. Slim black aluminium frame, glazed with clear plexiglass instead of glass, so it travels safely. Print and frame ship together in one package and are assembled on arrival. Part of the Hotel Collection — volume pricing from ten pieces.