c. 1832

Early Summer Rain (Samidare no kei), from an Untitled Series of Landscapes

Japanese, 1786 - 1865

Utagawa Kunisada is among the most celebrated practitioners of color woodcut in a Japanese genre known as ukiyo-e, or "pictures of the floating world." Artists in this tradition pushed the potential of color printing to new levels, with multiple blocks carved to print each layer of color and a whole team involved in their production. The flatness of the rain that cuts across the surface of this scene belies the more subtle transitions between areas of color that made ukiyo-e images such captivating works.