Kambara: Night Snow

Night, and snow still falling: three figures bend into the silence of a village going white, the whole scene held in blacks, grays, and the untouched white of the paper. Widely held to be the masterpiece of the series — and it is pure invention, for Kambara sits on the mild Suruga coast where deep snow like this almost never falls. Hiroshige printed not a place but a hush. The snow is no pigment at all — it is the paper itself, reserved; the sky is a single hand-wiped gradation of gray to black, and no line anywhere is louder than a footstep. Snow silences the road. The travelers keep walking.

Maker

Utagawa Hiroshige

Date

c. 1833–34

Medium of the original

Woodblock print; ink and color on paper

Rights

Cleared for print

Catalogue number

PA-00385