Shiomizaka Slope
潮見坂
- Birth Year
- 1880
- Death Year
- 1916
- Date
- 1915
- Technique, Material, Format
- color on silk, hanging scroll
- Dimension
- 112.5 x 42.0 cm
- Category
- Nihonga (Japanese-style Painting)
- Inventory Number
- 87-JP-004
TAKE A CLOSER LOOK: Shiomizaka Slope by Imamura Shiko (video / June 2023) This unique video series deliberately includes no commentary, allowing you unimpeded enjoyment of artworks from the Yokohama Museum of Art collection in detail-rich close-up and from new angles.
In 1915 Imamura Shiko worked prolifically, despite suffering from an illness that would eventually take his life the following year. This is one of the works he had researched while traveling the previous year for a collaborative project on the fifty-three stations of the Tokaido. The Shiomizaka slope was located near the Shirasuka Station, and is now part of Kosai City, Shizuoka Prefecture. Utagawa Hiroshige’s ukiyo-e of the same location looks down over the Enshu Sea from a vantage point at the top of the mountain pass. In contrast, Shiko’s image looks back from the seaside up to the mountains, depicting the path as a zigzag-like belt in a vertical image. The humorous shape of the path is accentuated by the use of a limited color palette. This ambitious work, which boldly redefined a traditional motif, was owned by Yasuda Yukihiko, a colleague of the artist.
(YATSUYANAGI Sae)