Inside Kameido Tenjin Shrine

The artwork

Clusters of purple wisteria hang from above like a curtain, and behind them a wooden bridge draws a perfect arch over the pond. You receive it printed on handmade Amalfi paper, in a handmade frame.

• The purple of the wisteria, the light blue of the water and the green of the pines.
• A bright, springlike picture that cheers up a living room or a bedroom.
• A gift for anyone who loves flowers and Japanese gardens.

Utagawa Hiroshige (1797-1858), the best loved landscape artist of Japan, published it in 1856 in the One Hundred Famous Views of Edo, the series devoted to the city we now call Tokyo. Kameido Tenjin Shrine, on the eastern edge of the city, was founded in the early 1660s and dedicated to Tenjin: the name under which Sugawara no Michizane was worshipped, a scholar and statesman who lived between the ninth and tenth centuries and became the protector of learning and calligraphy. Its arched bridge was so well known that anyone who saw the print recognised the place at once.

Hiroshige looks at the bridge through the flowers, so that foreground and background touch: a way of composing that a few years later would strike European painters deeply. Our reproduction comes from the impression in the Brooklyn Museum in New York.

In a living room or a bedroom it brings the Japanese spring. A gentle gift for anyone who loves flowers.

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