The Moon in Smoke: #22 of One Hundred Aspects of the Moon Yale University Art Gallery

1886

Tsukioka Yoshitoshi was one of the last Ukiyo-e artists of the nineteenth century. Here he captured a dramatic scene of orange flames and smoke set with a firefighter in the foreground, wearing a thick, indigo coat with decorative sashiko stitching. He wears headgear with a mark indicating his squad, Marugumi (Circle). He holds a matoi, a three-dimensional flag indicating the location of the firefighters. On the right are three gray silhouetted figures of other firefighters on a roof. Above, the moon is covered by smoke, hardly noticeable, taking a secondary role to the action below.

Medium: Ukiyo-e; polychrome woodblock print
Dimensions: sheet: 14 × 9 3/4 in. (35.6 × 24.8 cm)
Credit Line: Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Fred Olsen, Mr. and Mrs. Laurens Hammond, and Mr. and Mrs. Knight Woolley, B.A. 1917
Accession Number: 1967.64.124
Geography: Japan
Culture: Japanese
Period: Meiji era (1868–1912)
Classification: Prints
Disclaimer: Note: This electronic record was created from historic documentation that does not necessarily reflect the Yale University Art Gallery’s complete or current knowledge about the object. Review and updating of records is ongoing.

Provenance

Fred H. Olsen (1891–1986), and Florence Quittenton Olsen, Guilford, Conn.; gift in 1967 to Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Conn.

Bibliography

John Stevenson, Yoshitoshi's One Hundred Aspects of the Moon (San Francisco: San Francisco Graphic Society, 1992), no. 22, ill.

Suzanne E. Wright and Melissa Walt Thompson, Working in the Floating World, exh. cat. (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Art Gallery, 1986), no. 1, fig. 2

Object copyright

No Copyright - United States

Additional information

Object/Work type

color woodcuts

Marks

seal lower left "Taisho"

Signed

lower left, "Yoshitoshi"

Technical metadata and APIs

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