page_title: Sudden Shower over Shin-Ōhashi bridge and Atake
section_title: Influence
hierarchical_section_title: Sudden Shower over Shin-Ōhashi bridge and Atake / Influence
caption_attribution_description: English: United States, 1879 Prints; etchings Etching and drypoint 7 15/16 x 11 5/8 in. (20.16 x 29.53 cm) Gift of The Julius and Anita Zelman Collection (AC1992.234.9) Prints and Drawings
context_page_description: Sudden Shower over Shin-Ōhashi bridge and Atake is a woodblock print in the ukiyo-e genre by the Japanese artist Hiroshige. It was published in 1857 as part of the series One Hundred Famous Views of Edo and is one of the best known of Hiroshige's prints.
  The well-known variant state of this print, the variant owned by Van Gogh, is in fact a later state. The first state depicted an additional two boats, a different background, less angular rain, and a carving error in the pylons that was corrected by handpainting.
context_section_description: Some of Hiroshige's most popular prints were produced in the tens of thousands at a low individual cost and due to the opening up of Japan after 1853 were popular both in Japan and Europe where they had a huge influence on the future Impressionist artists. Whistler produced a number of prints and paintings using a bridge motif in London in the 1870s that were heavily influenced in their composition and subject by Hiroshige's many bridge prints. He used for example non-Western composition in the siting of the bridges, sometimes using no detailed foreground or background objects, scurrying undetailed people on the bridges, large area of negative space and the odd boat on the river. The theme of scurrying people sheltering from the weather under umbrellas that is typical of One Hundred Views of Edo was an influence on Félix Buhot's Le Petit Enterrement and Hiroshige's high horizons, areas of blue wash and strong foreground imagery with lack of middle ground influenced Auguste-Louis Lepère's prints such as La Convalescente: Madame Lepère.
  Vincent van Gogh was a major collector of Japanese prints, decorating his studio with them. He was heavily influenced by these prints, particularly Hiroshige, and made copies of two of the One Hundred Famous Views of Edo, Plum Park in Kameido and this one. He made these copies in order to try out for himself elements he admired such as the cropped composition, blocks of colour with strong outlines and diagonal elements.
  Van Gogh's painting used brighter colours with greater contrast than the original, conspicuous brushstrokes rather than areas of flat colour, and was also framed with a selection of Van Gogh's approximations to Japanese characters.
  Hiroshige's print was listed by The Observer's art critic Laura Cumming as one of the 10 best skies in art.
  The composer Geoffrey Poole produced the work Crossing Ohashi Bridge for the Goldberg Ensemble and named after Hiroshige's print.
caption: 'Old Putney Bridge' etching by Whistler from the 1870s
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