Eight views of Tōei's foothills (Tōeiroku hakkei)

Kitao Shigemasa, possibly by

Folding album of colour woodblock prints entitled 'Eight views of Tōei's foothills' (Tōeiroku hakkei) unsigned and printed in ink and colours on paper in Japan around 1777. This set of eight chūban format colour woodblock prints depicts scenes from the area of Tōeizan in the city of Edo, now Tokyo's Ueno district. The series follows the Chinese model of temporal descriptions of landscape known as the Eight views of the Xiao and Xiang rivers, but matched to contemporary Edo. The stacked-triangle mark of publisher Urokogataya Magobei is just visible in the ground of ‘Night rain on the alley shop’, but the artist's name is not recorded. Most recently, it is thought that they are the work of artist Kitao Shigemasa. The poems above have been attributed to Ōta Nanpo and Kimuro Bōun. Individual titles are as follows: 'Evening snow on the mochi stand' (Mochiya no bosetsu), 'Returning sails of the peep box' (Nozoki no kihan), 'Clearing breeze at Tsurukichi' (Tsurukichi no seiran), 'Autumn moon over the brothel' (Kekoro no aki no tsuki), 'Descending geese of the archery range' (Dokyū no rakugan), 'Sunset glow of the tea house' (Cha mise no sekishō), 'Vespers bell at the temple shop' (Hotokedana no banshō), 'Night rain on the alley shop' (Tobudana no yoru no ame). The mark of collector Théodore Duret is included on the inside front cover.