The Pyramids in Egypt, a Newly Published Dutch Perspective Picture

Japanese artists learned the methods of western perspective via an illustrated Chinese translation of a European treatise on perspective, which was published in Canton in the early 1730s and found its way to Edo by 1739. Around 1770 Utagawa Toyoharu, a young Edo artist, began designing a series of block-printed miniature views for use in hand-held optical viewing devices. Later he redesigned many of the miniature pictures as full-size horizontal prints. The vogue for these perspective prints lasted into the 19th century. The format of Kuninaga's view of the pyramids in Egypt, with a printed borderline and a printed picture title at the right, was introduced by Toyoharu.