UTAGAWA HIROSHIGE (1797-1858)

Three figures trudge through falling snow in the village of Kanbara, Shizuoka Prefecture. In fact Hiroshige visited Kanbara during late summer or early autumn and therefore this scene is imagined. Considered amongst his finest snowscenes, in the earliest impressions of this design (as here), the leg of the far right figure has a flaw whereby the block-cutter mistakenly did not cut away all the wood between the lines of the legs. In these early impressions the black bokashi usually descends from the top of the design.