Utagawa Kunisada (歌川国貞) / Toyokuni III (三代豊国) (artist 1786 – 01/12/1865)
View of Ishibe (Ishibe no zu: 石部之圖) from the chuban series Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō Road (Tōkaidō gojūsan tsugi no uchi: 東海道五十三次之内)
ca 1838
Signed: Kōchōrō Kunisada ga (香蝶楼国貞画)
Publisher: Sanoya Kihei
Censor's seal: kiwame
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston - copy with no publisher's seal
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston - copy with Moriya Jihei seal
Museum für angewandte Kunst, Vienna
Fujisawa Ukiyo-e Museum - no publisher's seal, but with the kiwame
National Diet Library - with Moriya Kihei seal and the kiwame
Honolulu Museum of Art
Spencer Museum of Art no publisher's seal, but with the kiwame
Ishikawa Prefectural Museum of Art - they date their copy to 1836
Bryn Mawr
Honolulu Museum of Art
Google maps - Ishibe
Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, the University of California This is number 52 in the series. Kunisada did not take his inspiration directly from a Hiroshige model. Instead he created his own scene "...with a tea house. An employee of the house is serving tea to a samurai. In front of it is a woman who is just getting out of a litter. Left and right the two litter carriers. In the foreground is a woman who is performing a dance with an open fan." (This information was provided from the curatorial files at the Museum für angewandte Kunst in Vienna.)
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In Tokaido Landscapes: The Path from Hiroshige to Contemporary Artists, 2011, #52, p. 65, speaking of the original Hiroshige print it says in a text by Sasaki Moritoshi: "Megawa was actually close to the next station, Kusatsu, and it was known for a dish called dengaku (baked tofu, coated with miso; it was served with rice cooked with daikon greens). Pictured here is Iseya, an actual shop that specialized in this dish.... The three stations of Ishibe, Kusatsu, and Ōtsu were depicted through shops that sold foods for which the stations were known. People in Edo who had no connection to the Kyoto area must have delighted in imaging the taste of these regional specialties when viewing these prints."
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Illustrated in a small color reproduction in Kunisada's Tokaido: Riddles in Japanese Woodblock Prints by Andreas Marks, Hotei Publishing, 2013, page 75 and again in a somewhat larger one on page 78, T24-52.
Sanoya Kihei (佐野屋喜兵衛) (publisher)
landscape prints (fūkeiga 風景画) (genre)