Bridge in the rain: after Hiroshige

Compared with the colours in the original woodcut by Japanese artist Hiroshige, which was the inspiration for this work, the colours of van Gogh's 'The bridge in the rain' are somewhat muted. He reproduced the falling rain by using long vertical touches in dark blue applied with a fine brush. Van Gogh decorated the brightly-coloured frame with Oriental characters that he based on to two different prints by other artists.