Utagawa Hiroshige – Sparrows and Camellia in Snow, c. 1831–33

Utagawa Hiroshige – Sparrows and Camellia in Snow, c. 1831–33 | Framed Giclée Print

CHF 139.00

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Two sparrows drop through falling snow past a camellia branch, its leaves loaded and its flowers still open. The format is ōtanzaku — a tall, narrow panel of about 38 by 17.3 centimetres, the shape used for poem-slips and for pictures meant to hang in the narrow space between two posts.

Hiroshige is remembered for landscapes, but he made hundreds of bird-and-flower panels like this one. The snow in them is not painted on: it is the paper itself, left unprinted — the drift on each leaf, the breasts of the birds, the flakes in the air. The picture is built out of what the blocks were cut to leave alone.

Which impression. Woodblocks wear and pigments fade, so no two surviving sheets look alike. This one is the Art Institute of Chicago's, given by H. R. Warner in 1932: the blue ground is even and the red of the camellia has not turned.

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: 38 × 17.3 cm / 15.0 × 6.8 in — ōtanzaku, Art Institute of Chicago
40 × 50 cm / 15.7 × 19.7 in — original size, 1:1. Image 16.96 × 37.18 cm.

The narrow panel is centred on the sheet, with the side borders wider than the top and bottom — what a mount does for a narrow picture anyway. The sheet is reproduced whole, including the inscription and the seal.

Provenance
Utagawa Hiroshige (1797–1858), Sparrows and Camellia in Snow, c. 1831–33; colour woodblock print, ōtanzaku, 38 × 17.3 cm.
The Art Institute of Chicago, Gift of H. R. Warner, Acc. No. 1932.208.
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.