One Hundred Famous Views of Edo · Utagawa Hiroshige, 1857
Plum Garden in Kameido
A plum tree with a name — and a painter who copied it.
The Work
A bold composition: one huge plum branch up front, tiny visitors beyond it.
Look Closer
Kameido's garden was famous for its "Reclining Dragon" plum, said to have been named by Tokugawa Mitsukuni.
The Artist
Hiroshige was born in Edo in 1797 to a family of shogunate firefighters, and studied painting alongside the family trade.
The Artist
His late series, One Hundred Famous Views of Edo, ran to more than a hundred prints across the seasons.
Edo at the Time
The series appeared soon after the great Ansei earthquake of 1855 — a portrait of a city rebuilding.
Culture & Values
Edo people celebrated early spring with plum viewing, weeks before the cherry blossoms.
Meanwhile, in the World
In 1850s Paris, a vast rebuilding was cutting new boulevards through the old city.
Afterward
In 1887 Van Gogh copied this print in oil. The garden itself was lost to a flood in the late Meiji era.
Listen while you look
This print stays on screen for about ten minutes in the full hour, with Plum Blossom Path and Reclining Dragon Bough.
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