Snow
Original title: Snow
kurzbeschreibung
Four figures in Japanese dress make their way through a snowy place under large yellow umbrellas. Suzuki Harunobu captured this scene around 1769 as a colour woodblock print, executed in ink and colour on paper.
Description
At the front, two women and a man walk beneath the yellow umbrellas; behind them another person emerges. The figures face each other in a symmetrical arrangement, their clothing patterned in red, yellow and grey. Black and grey dominate the background and make the winter feel genuinely cold. Across the top of the sheet run Chinese characters, presumably a title or inscription.
Context
Harunobu ranks among the most important woodblock artists of the Edo period and is considered a pioneer of multicolour printing, nishiki-e. This sheet dates from around 1769, a phase in which he was prized for his elegant portrayals of women and scenes of everyday life. In Edo, present-day Tokyo, such prints came onto the market in large editions and remained affordable for a broad urban public.
Impact
Luminous yellow meets a dark ground, and the contrast heightens the wintry mood. Because the figures are distributed calmly and symmetrically, the image feels still, almost ceremonial. The umbrellas direct the gaze toward the faces and the finely patterned garments.
Technique
To make the print, the design was cut into wooden blocks and transferred to paper with watercolours. Sharp contours and clearly separated areas of colour define the result. Harunobu worked with several blocks, one for each individual colour, which produced a nuanced range of tones.
AI-generated description text
Source: Metropolitan Museum of Art · Public Domain (CC0 1.0)