The wife found this painting in a thrift store. She is wondering if it is an actual place but it’s hard to nail down without an extremely identifiable landmark. Does this image ring any bells? It doesn’t appear to be a current time from the imagery. The building with the American flag and some other blue flag is what I’m hoping will jar someone’s intuition; I’ve seen way more obscurity deciphered at SF so let us know what you think.

Can't say if it's a specific location, but my guess is that it depicts one of the large industrial cities in what we now call the rust belt, along a large river or near the Great Lakes, circa the 1930s-1950s, when such manufacturing was at its peak. Look at all the stacks spewing smoke.

Did you try searching for the image using Google to see if anything turns up?

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I tried that and had no luck.

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We did; no hits. I’m going to try it with individual aspects of the image next.

I thought of Chicago and the Chicago river in the foreground.

Ford headquarters/factory in Dearborn, MI on the Rouge River.

(That is my wild-ass guess.)

Asian temple and pagoda should provide a clue.

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Hiroshima around the day before Aug 6 1945

The A bomb dome is the building on the right, Hiroshima peace museum. At least that’s my vote

The structure around 10 o'clock seems very asian. I'm thinking a Japanese ship building city. Yokohama maybe?

Since the other buildings seem western, a Chinese port somewhere in mid 20th century maybe?

That dome sure looks like the Genbaku in Hiroshima.

There's a subreddit or three dedicated to the task of finding locations based on an image.

Have a look here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/whereisthis/

I agree it's Hiroshima. But I believe its a forward-looking imagined future. That's am American and UN flag on the structure in the fireground. It's not a painting of a real existing space.

Looks like there’s three or four flags on top of the building in the foreground. I don’t believe it to be Hiroshima. The one building, before the bomb was dropped, looks nothing like the building in the painting. That, as it exists now, is much too close to the bridge to allow space for the building with the flags.

Edited to add:
I believe these temples where built over a thousand years ago which makes it likely the temple in the painting is a real place. It looks like the Sensō-Ji Temple in the Asakusa district of Tokyo which is also close to the Sumida River.

Hiroshima is a good guess, but on comparing to satellite view, it's either not correct or the painting is way off of reality.



The Hiroshima atomic bomb dome/genbaku building has wings both upriver and downriver that don't appear in the painting and there isn't room between the bridge (which is a reconstruction of the original bridge) for anything remotely the size of the building in the painting.

It seems to be an Asian city. Perhaps it is an imagined view of Hiroshima as it might have been or after rebuilding. The domed building leads me to think Hiroshima isn't a bad guess.

It doesn't look like actual Hiroshima, based on the few pre-bomb aerial images I could find. There weren't many large masonry buildings there before the war.

quote:

Originally posted by jhe888:
It seems to be an Asian city.

The left flag on the building in the foreground might be the flag of Taiwan or the flag of Malaysia. Both are basically red with a blue top left corner.

Dumb question, perhaps, but is it possible to read the sign over the entryway directly beneath the flags?

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I’ve tried to discern the sign but can’t make heads or tails of it. I was really hoping the shape of the large building (Housing? Hotel?) was recognizable. If it is fact a real structure, it is somewhat distinct especially given its location.

Another aspect that seemed to hint at it being a postwar Asian city was the decided lack of automobile traffic and a HUGE thoroughfare that looks dedicated to foot traffic.

Above the building in the middle...it appears to be a castle. Like what the Japanese built.

All the smokestacks are billowing in the same direction, even the boat on the river.