1830s: Hiroshige did not immediately begin to produce landscape prints. His main output consisted of prints of beautiful women (bijinga) and actors (yakushae). He gradually gave up figure prints for landscapes. He started, under the influence of the great Hokusai, the series that made him famous.

      1832: He traveled between Edo and Kyoto along the famed highway called the Tokaido; he stayed at the 53 overnight stations along the road and made numerous sketches of everything he saw. He published a series of 55 landscape prints entitled the “Fifty-three Stations on the Tokaido” – one for each station, as well as the beginning of the highway and the arrival in Kyoto. The success of this series was immediate and made Hiroshige one of the most popular ukiyo-e artists of all time.

      1850s: Some vertical-format compilations of landscape prints date from this period such as “Famous Places in Kyoto” (1834), “Eight Views of Lake Biwa” (1835), “Sixty-nine Stations on the Kiso Highway” (c. 1837), and “One Hundred Famous Views of Edo” (1856–58).

      1858: Hiroshige died of cholera and was buried in a Zen temple in Asakusa, Tokyo.

      Between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries in Japan, the Edo period (1603–1868), a new tendency in urban art developed and it is to this style, known as ukiyo-e, literally “pictures of the floating world”, that the woodblock print belongs.

      Ando Hiroshige is quite possibly the most famous Japanese print artist beyond his native shores. In 1811 he joined the pupils of one of the prominent print artists of the day, Utagawa Toyohiro. From the turn of the 1830s, Hiroshige’s thoughts were more and more concentrated on the landscape, which subsequently became the chief theme of his creative work.

      Peach, Plum, Chrysanthemum, a Monkey, and Chickens

      From the series Shellwork from an exhibition at Okuyama in Asakusa

      1820

      Colour woodblock print, 38 × 25.5 cm

      Victoria and Albert Museum, London

      Over the course of more than twenty years, the artist produced several series of prints, which demonstrated most vividly his talent in that sphere of art. In the 1850s Hiroshige’s work underwent a radical change: the earlier smooth narrative manner gave way to abrupt compositional and chromatic contrasts.

      Hiroshige’s landscapes represented a new and final stage of development in the ukiyo-e landscape print and, more broadly, in the traditional art of Japan. For him, there were no vulgar objects, and in his work any landscape motif reflected in human perception is a means of penetrating the essence of nature, its spirit

      Kanbara, from the series “Fifty-three stages of the Kisokaido”

      Tokaido gojusan-tsugi: Kanbara

      1835–42

      Brocade print, 38 × 25.5 cm

      Tokyo National Museum, Tokyo

      Spring

      The Nihonbashi (the “Bridge of Japan”) here functions as a symbol of Edo, then the capital of Japan, and indeed of the country as a whole.

      In the year following the construction of the bridge, 1604, Tokugawa Ieyasu issued a decree that assured the importance of the Nihonbashi for posterity: the middle of the bridge became the point from which all distances in the country were to be measured. The area around the Nihonbashi was one of the most important commercial centres in Edo.

      A Bright Morning after a Fall of Snow by the Nihonbashi Bridge

      Nihonbashi Yukibare

      May 1856

      Colour woodblock print, 33.7 × 22.5 cm

      Gift of Theodore Lande, Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, Vancouver

      This view of sailing boats against the dawn background is the one obtained from the tall eminence called Kasumigasekizaka – the Hill of the Outpost of the Mists.

      After Edo was made the capital, Tokugawa Ieyasu allocated Kasumigaseki for the residences of powerful members of the feudal hierarchy (tozama-daimyo). The prevailing atmosphere on the street is one of merry-making. Hiroshige’s depiction of the Outpost of the Mists is indeed set in a festive period, during the New Year celebrations.

      The Outpost of the Mists

      Kasumigaseki

      January 1857

      Colour woodblock print, 37 × 23 cm

      Gift of Anna Ferris, Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York

      This print depicts one of the most aristocratic areas of the Eastern Capital – the place known as Hibiya, in the Soto-Sakurada district. Hiroshige places us directly opposite this estate, and the red gates of the house are the first thing to catch our attention. This is considered the most detailed image of a daimyo estate in ukiyo-e art. Two further details catch the attention: the traditional and most common New Year decoration, kadomatsu, a decorated pine in front of the entrance in the foreground, and the kites fluttering in the sky. These are indisputable signs that the start of the New Year is depicted here.

      Hibiya in the Soto-Sakurada District, seen from the Yamashita Quarter

      Yamashitacho Hibiya Soto-Sakurada

      December 1857

      Colour woodblock print, 36 × 24 cm

      Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York

      Here the viewer is placed in a boat passing beneath the Eitaibashi

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