Spring Rain at Tsuchiyama

The artwork

Spring rain falls thick as a veil, and a procession of men bent under straw hats and capes crosses a bridge over the swollen stream. You receive it printed on handmade Amalfi paper, in a handmade frame.

• The greys of the rain, the dark green of the woods and the blue of the rushing water.
• An image full of atmosphere, which gives character to a study or a living room.
• A gift for anyone who loves rain, travel and Japan.

It belongs to the Fifty-Three Stations of the Tōkaidō, the series that made Utagawa Hiroshige (1797-1858), the best loved landscape artist of Japan, famous, published from 1833 onwards. The Tōkaidō was the great road that linked Edo, today's Tokyo, with Kyoto, with fifty-three post stations. Tsuchiyama lay among the mountains, just past the Suzuka pass.

It rained there so often that it found its way into a song of the local packhorse drivers: at Saka the sun shines, on the Suzuka pass there are clouds, and in between, at Tsuchiyama, it rains. Hiroshige draws the rain with long thin lines cut into the wood, and shows us the procession of a daimyō, a feudal lord travelling to Edo or back home, with the spears covered and the men bowed under the rain, while the stream rushes foaming under the bridge. Our reproduction comes from the impression in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

In a study or a living room it brings the soft sound of rain. A gift for anyone who loves Japanese prints.

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