Horikiri Iris Garden

The artwork

Three irises as tall as trees fill the foreground, and between their stems we glimpse in the distance the flowering garden and the visitors who have come from the city. You receive it printed on handmade Amalfi paper, in a handmade frame.

• The white and purple of the flowers, the green of the leaves and the sky fading into blue.
• A fresh, light picture that brightens a bedroom or a living room.
• A gift for anyone who loves flowers and gardens.

Utagawa Hiroshige (1797-1858), the best loved landscape artist of Japan, published it in 1857 in the One Hundred Famous Views of Edo, the series devoted to the city now called Tokyo. Horikiri was a village of growers who supplied flowers to the Edo market, and its fame came from these very irises, called hanashōbu: a variety that grows well in wet ground, like the marshy fields of the area. When they bloomed, people from the city made the trip just to see them.

Hiroshige uses an idea that recurs throughout the series: he places a huge element right before our eyes and the small landscape behind it. The flowers seem a step away from us, and the garden becomes as distant as a memory. Our reproduction comes from the impression in the Brooklyn Museum in New York.

In a bedroom or a bright living room it brings a garden that blooms all year. A gentle gift for anyone who loves greenery.

Unique quality material

Print on handmade Amalfi paper
Sheet size: 29 x 42 cm (11.4 x 16.5 in)
With frame: 31 x 44 cm (12.2 x 17.3 in)
Material: artwork printed on very fine handmade Amalfi paper with deckled edges
Frame: dark brown with gold fillet, handmade, with glass