Shimosuwa: Travellers Dining at an Inn
1835–38 · Woodblock print; ink and colour on paper · The Cleveland Museum of Art
📦 Free shipping on every order, arriving in 4–9 business days with production included. Express ($14.90) at checkout arrives in 4–6 business days.
This print
About this work
- Artist
- Utagawa Hiroshige (1797–1858)
- Year
- 1835–38
- Medium
- Woodblock print; ink and colour on paper
- Original size
- 25.3 × 37.7 cm
- Collection
- The Cleveland Museum of Art (impression 1985.322; many other impressions exist)
- Movement
- Ukiyo-e
- Series
- Sixty-nine Stations of the Kisokaidō
Through the open front of an inn, travellers sit on a green floor eating from small lacquer trays while a maid in a patterned kimono serves rice from a tub. Towels hang above a blue patterned screen, and a guest kneels with his back to us. At the left, past paper doors and under a thatched roof, another guest soaks in a round wooden bathtub. This is print thirty of The Sixty-nine Stations of the Kisokaidō, published by Hōeidō and later Kinjudō in 1835–38. Keisai Eisen began the series and Utagawa Hiroshige, who designed this sheet, completed it. Shimosuwa was the twenty-ninth station on the Nakasendō, the inland road from Edo to Kyoto; the English title is descriptive, and impressions vary in colour and condition.
This print reproduces the whole work, uncropped, from a high-resolution scan of the original. The original is in the public domain.
Where it works
Warm straw-gold thatch, soft green matting and a deep blue patterned screen, for a dining room, kitchen or living room at 24×16 in natural wood. It pairs with Hiroshige's Akasaka: Inn with Serving Maids for two evenings inside a roadside inn.
Style, size & framing detail
- Style
- Ukiyo-e painting
- Era
- 19th century (1835–38)
- Orientation
- Landscape
- Palette
- cornflower blue
- Mood
- calm
- Rooms
- living room, kitchen, dining room
- Good gift for
- housewarming, travelers, art lovers
Size. We'd hang this one at 24×16. Prints at 18×12, 24×16, 36×24 in — 18×12 for a shelf, desk or a gallery-wall grid; 24×16 above a console or sideboard; 36×24 as the statement piece above a sofa or headboard.
Framing. The gallery ground is part of the print, so frame it without a mat — natural wood flatters the lighter palette; black sharpens it.
Pairing. Pairs as a set of three with other famous painting prints (10% off three or more).
Details & materials
Shipping & returns
Is this the whole painting, or a crop?
Is Shimosuwa: Travellers Dining at an Inn in the public domain?
What is it printed on?
When was Shimosuwa: Travellers Dining at an Inn painted, and in what medium?
What size works above a sofa or bed?
About this design
The Madten promise
An exhibition poster
The same artwork as a gallery exhibition poster — title, artist & date typeset beneath the image on a soft ground.
