Sudden Shower over Shin-Ōhashi Bridge and Atake

This 1857 color woodblock print belongs to One Hundred Famous Views of Edo, Hiroshige's late series of views of the shogun's capital. The series was published from 1856 to 1858 and introduced new energy to city views through ambitious printing and design. The Metropolitan Museum of Art notes the print's fine, crisscrossing rain lines, a technically difficult woodblock effect favored by Edo poets and print artists. Hiroshige was one of Japan's foremost landscape-print designers and also created the popular Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō. His commercially published prints made views of places widely available during the Edo period, when Japan was ruled by the shogun.