Flowering Plum Tree
Beyond a thick plum branch in the foreground lie a red evening sky and people viewing the blossoms: the Hiroshige print Van Gogh copied in oil. Full commentary ↓
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Flowering Plum Tree is a woodblock print by Utagawa Hiroshige (ca. 1843–47) in the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. It measures 34.6 × 11.4 cm.
In the pictureA thick black plum branch cuts across the front of the picture, dotted with white blossoms. Beyond it are a sky flushed red, green ground and small figures viewing the plum blossoms inside a fence. Near things are large and far things small, with something extremely close set right in front: that is the composition.
BackgroundThis is a sheet from Hiroshige's last series, One Hundred Famous Views of Edo (1856–58). This plum tree at Kameido was a famous sight, called the Reclining Dragon Plum (Garyūbai) because its branches crawled along the ground and stretched out like a dragon. In 1887 Van Gogh copied this print faithfully in oil, and that painting is now in Amsterdam.
Puzzle tipAs a puzzle, the black pieces of the foreground branch and the pieces of red sky behind separate at once by color. Place the branch pieces by the position of the white blossom dots, and the sky pieces by the red, which deepens toward the top. Finish the bottom strip with the people and the fence first, and the rest becomes easy.
- Artist
- Japanese, Tokyo (Edo) 1797–1858 Tokyo (Edo)
- Period
- Edo period (1615–1868)
- Culture
- Japan
- Classification
- Prints
- Medium
- Woodblock print (nishiki-e); ink and color on paper
- Dimensions
- 34.6 x 11.4 cm
- Credit line
- The Howard Mansfield Collection, Purchase, Rogers Fund, 1936
Source: The Metropolitan Museum of Art ↗
In these collections: Spring Masterpiece Puzzles · Flower Painting Puzzles
Stories about this work
- A Wave, a Red Fuji and a Plum Branch: Three Prints by Hokusai and Hiroshige as Puzzles
Under the Wave off Kanagawa, the most reproduced print in the world; Red Fuji; and Hiroshige's plum garden, which Van Gogh copied in oil. Why woodblock prints work so well as puzzles.
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