Night Rain at Azuma-no-mori, from the series Eight Views in the Environs of Edo

ca. 1837-1838

Utagawa Hiroshige was one of Japan’s most celebrated and prolific designers of landscape-theme woodblock prints. Although some of his most famous prints feature bright colors, he also made very subtle compositions that rely heavily on shades of gray and textures that recall the brushwork of ink paintings. In this image from an Eight Views series, he uses ink of a light color printed over a darker one to represent the subject of “rain at night.”