#72 Haneda no watashi Benten no yashira (Benten Shrine from the Ferry at Haneda)

Utagawa Hiroshige, artist

1797–1858

#72 Haneda no watashi Benten no yashira (Benten Shrine from the Ferry at Haneda), 1858, 8th month, Edo period (1600–1868)

Portfolio/Series title: 名所江戸百景 Meisho Edo Hyakkei (One-hundred Views of Famous Places in Edo)

Where object was made: Japan

Material/technique: color woodcut

Dimensions:
Image Dimensions Height/Width (Height x Width): 339 x 225 mm
Image Dimensions Height/Width (Height x Width): 13 3/8 x 8 7/8 in
Sheet/Paper Dimensions (Height x Width): 341 x 252 mm
Sheet/Paper Dimensions (Height x Width): 13 7/16 x 9 15/16 in

Credit line: Source unknown

Accession number: 0000.2858

Not on display

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Label texts

Exhibition Label:
Installation related to "Tokyo: The Imperial Capital Woodblock prints by Koizumi Kishio, 1928-1940," Feb-2005, Hillary Pedersen
Hiroshige has proven his compositional ingenuity with this print. Framed by the boatman’s arms, legs, and the boat’s rowing mechanism, the viewer shares the same vantage point as the passenger in the lower right corner, indicated by a black parasol. The scene is of a spit of land that was home to a lighthouse and a Shinto shrine dedicated to Benten, the goddess of water. The spit is now connected to the mainland by Benten Bridge, the entryway to Haneda Airport. As compensation for removal of the shrine from its original location during construction of the airport, two red torii (gates demarkating sacred Shinto sites) were erected at the airport entrances.

Archive Label Sept-May 1993:
In this series of prints, Hiroshige depicts famous places in the large and bustling capital city of Edo, now Tokyo. Such sets of prints, also made of other cities, such as Kyoto, were popular souvenirs for tourists and also purchased by armchair travelers.
This print is a good example of a compositional formula Japanese artists frequently used: a partial view of cropped image in the foreground set against a more distant landscape backgound. ...French artists emulated this compositional formula. For example, the incomplete but realistically hairy, sinewy legs of the ferryman in Hiroshige's print can be compared with the half figure of a non-idealized washerwoman in the work of Lepere (on exhibit).