SKIES IN ART

Hiroshige

Sudden Shower Over Shin-Ohashi Bridge and Atake, No 58, from One Hundred Famous Views of Edo (1857) Brooklyn Museum
We say we see the sky, but where is it exactly? Hiroshige, Japanese master, had ways to make it appear all around us in his woodcuts, cross-fading land into sky, dark into light and air into moisture to radiant effect, partly by wiping ink from the block before printing. Here the black band at the top represents both the dark imperium of outer space and the raincloud shedding its needle-sharp striations upon the pedestrians surprised on the bridge.