Japanese Print Illustrating the Peaceful and Refined Beauty of Japanese Nature - Hiroshige's Plum Garden at Kameido

"Plum Garden at Kameido" (original title: 亀戸梅屋舗) is a woodblock print by the Japanese painter and illustrator Utagawa Hiroshige (1797-1858) produced in November 1857.

This is one of the best-known plates in the series. It is somewhat similar to the 27th, but its main feature is the presence in the foreground of a plum tree through whose branches the background can be seen, another example of the unusual image and optical effect favored by the artist. As in the twenty-seventh print, the colors of the sky are white, pink, and red, in a subtle gradation of great beauty and remarkable visual power. The garden belongs to the Kameido Tenjinsha Shrine, and the plum tree depicted was famous for its unusual shape. Known as Garyūume ("resting dragon"), it appears in all Edo guidebooks but was unfortunately swept away in a flood in . The List of Famous Places in Edo states: "It truly resembles a dragon on the ground. The branches intertwine and seem to transform into a new trunk. The tree spreads out to the right and left." The aroma of the flowers makes one forget that of the orchids, the luminous white of the flowers pressed against each other carries away the evening." Vincent van Gogh made a copy of this painting in 1887 under the title Japonaiseries, but here the muted tones of green, gray, and pink impart a great serenity that Van Gogh did not notice in his copy.