Utagawa Hiroshige
1832-35
A night like this,
Will one come again.
Wild geese and the moon.
Poet Unknown
With a full moon in the background, three geese cascade through the clouds. The clouds are colored with an ai-zuri gradation creating a three-dimensional effect on the clouds. A haiku is placed on the upper left of the composition. As the moon and wild geese are both poetic terms representative of the autumn, this print conveys an autumnal nightscape with the haiku describing the ephemerality of such a moment. The maker’s mark or inn Hiroshige uses for this print is a paring of a horse and deer. He used this inn in many of his bird and flower prints from 1830-45
This print along with No.67 were published at around the same time from publishing house Kawaguchi-ya who had publishing rights for this specific size of bird and flower prints called chū-tanzaku.. Hiroshige worked with Kawaguchi-ya exclusively on this specific size of bird and flower prints until 1837.