Bring your favorites together in your free personal gallery.
Your galleryA Passing Palanquin, from the series "Scenes of Flower-viewing at Ueno (Ueno hanami no tei)"
Look first
- What catches your attention?
- Where does your eye go next?
- What would you ask about this work?
Show me
Follow the two bearers and their long pole across the middle of the sheet, then find the monk with his staff and the man in a wide straw hat.
Hishikawa Moronobu, whom the Art Institute of Chicago credits as the first true artist of ukiyo-e, designed this sheet about 1681 to 1684 for a series of flower-viewing scenes at Ueno. Two bearers trot past with a closed palanquin, while people stroll in small groups among blossoming shrubs. It is printed in black ink alone, as the earliest Japanese woodblock prints were.
Woodblock print; oban, sumizuri-e · 27.1 × 40.9 cm · Art Institute of Chicago
Look again
What do you notice now?
Try a quick sketch
Take a minute to sketch on any paper. No upload needed.
What did you draw first? What did you leave out?
Details and source
- Museum title
- A Passing Palanquin, from the series "Scenes of Flower-viewing at Ueno (Ueno hanami no tei)"
- Artist
- Hishikawa Moronobu Japanese, (?)-1694
- Date
- c. 1681/84
- Medium
- Woodblock print; oban, sumizuri-e
- Dimensions
- 27.1 × 40.9 cm (10 11/16 × 16 1/8 in.)
- Credit line
- Kate S. Buckingham Endowment
- Image license
- CC0 1.0 · Public domain
- Museum record
- Art Institute of Chicago
Ukiyo-e c. 1600–1900
View in the AtlasGaller’s rooms and hanging scale are imagined. The image is the museum’s original digital reproduction.







