Plum Garden at Kameido

The thick black trunk crossing the picture left to right is the Reclining Dragon plum, its branches writhing as if a dragon crawled across the ground. Between the trunk and branches, the small figures of people viewing the flowers in the fenced plum grove peek through. In the upper part, white blossoms open in spots at the ends of slender branches.

The sky is deep red at the top and gradated to white toward the bottom, and the ground is a vivid green. In a bold perspective that draws the foreground trunk extremely large and the figures behind it small, the viewer is placed as if peering into the plum grove from the foot of the tree.

The Plum Garden was the garden of a merchant family near Kameido Tenjin, and the Reclining Dragon plum was the most famous plum tree in Edo. In plum season visitors came from all over Edo, and the garden bustled as an excursion spot. The famous tree later withered in a flood, and the Plum Garden was closed at the end of the Meiji era.

This is one of the best-known prints in the series and a representative work of the Spring section. Van Gogh copied this print in oil in 1887, and his copy is held by the Van Gogh Museum. The composition that shows the foreground trunk large made a strong impression on Western artists as well.