Utagawa Hiroshige (1797-1858) | New Year's Eve Foxfires at the Changing Tree, Oji (Oji Shozoku enoki Omisoka no kitsunebi) | Edo period, 19th century

拍品描述

woodblock print, from the series One Hundred Famous Views of Edo (Meisho Edo hyakkei), signed Hiroshige ga (Pictured by Hiroshige), censor's seal aratame (certified), published by Uoya Eikichi, 9th month 1857; with collector's seal of Gerhard Pulverer to verso Vertical oban: 35.3 x 23.2 cm., 14 by 9⅛ in. The only print in the series in One Hundred Famous Views of Edo in which Hiroshige ventures into historical fantasy. An Edo period guidebook, the Edo Meisho Ki, describes a large Inari shrine at Oji in northern Edo, dedicated to the eponymous god of foxes and harvests. Every New Year's Eve the foxes of the Kanto region congregated under the ancient enoki (hackberry tree) before paying their respects to their fox patron in the nearby shrine. Japanese folklore invests the fox with supernatural powers and here the foxes are depicted exhaling kitsunebi (fox flames). Farmers would predict the outcome of a harvest by the quantity of kitsunebi they saw. The atmosphere of the print owes much to the subtle greys and blues, supplemented by bokashi and mica at the top, the touches of bright green on the pine trees behind the enoki and at the top of the dark wood, with contrasting yellow and rose tints in the foxes and flames. There are different states of this print, with variations in: the overall darkness; the light blue and green tones in the expanse of sky below the dark bokashi line at the top; the intensity of the greys in the fields. In this fine impression, there is red bokashi at the bottom of the eerie flames that flicker about the foxes. This is the mark of the earliest edition.

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