Coloured woodcut depicting the Sumiyoshi Takadoro lighthouse in Osaka Bay. The image also includes an arched bridge, houses, a beach and distant ships. Signed in Japanese characters on the left: ‘Hiroshige hitsu’.

The Sumiyoshi Takadoro lighthouse was constructed at the end of the Kamakura period (1185–1333) as an offering for the gods of the Sumiyoshi Shrine. The tower was destroyed by Typhoon Jane in 1950 and rebuilt in stone.

This print is no.5 from ‘Famous Views of the Sixty-odd Provinces’, a series of ukiyo-e prints by the Japanese artist Hiroshige (1797–1858). The series consists of 70 prints in total, comprising one famous view from each of the 68 provinces of Japan, plus a view of the capital city, Edo (now Toyko), and a contents page. The prints were first published in serialized form by Koshimuraya Heisuke in 1853–56.

Hiroshige was considered the last great mast of the ukiyo-e tradition and his work influenced Impressionist and Post-Impressionist artists in Europe. Ukiyo-e, which translates as ‘pictures of the floating world’, was a genre of Japanese art characterised by colourful woodblock prints of everyday scenes of life in Japan. The tradition was popular during the Edo period (1615–1868).