歌川広重画 「近江八景 三井晩鐘」|Evening Bell at Miidera Temple, from the series Eight Views of Ōmi (Ōmi hakkei)

Utagawa Hiroshige, a master of ukiyo-e, presents a captivating scene in "Evening Bell at Miidera Temple." This woodblock print, created around 1834, is part of his renowned series, *Eight Views of Ōmi*. While Hiroshige is celebrated for his landscape series like *The Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō* and *One Hundred Famous Views of Edo*, he also produced other notable landscape series, including this one, around the same period. Interestingly, as he had never traveled west of Kyoto, his illustrations for Ōmi Province (modern Shiga Prefecture) were based on existing pictures and books rather than direct observation. This print exemplifies Hiroshige's poetic and ambient approach to landscapes, often employing subtle color gradation (bokashi) and multiple impressions—labor-intensive techniques that contribute to the print's depth and atmospheric quality. His work, known for its departure from the typical ukiyo-e focus on courtesans and actors, greatly influenced Western European painting in the late 19th century, with artists like Van Gogh even creating copies of his prints. Here, we see his characteristic ability to evoke a specific mood and time of day, a hallmark of his enduring legacy.