Utagawa Hiroshige (1797-1858) and Kunisada (1786-1865) Japanese, Woodblock Print. Titled "Fuchu: The Ferry Crossing at Abe River," produced in 1854 as part of a collaborative series titled "The Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō Road by Two Brushes." Kunisada's contribution shows a tea plantation worker in a kimono at Fuchu, assisted by a young boy carrying two baskets of leaves suspended from a yoke over his shoulder. Above, Hiroshige depicts the ferry crossing over the Abe River, with tiny figures making their way across the water with the assistance of porters and mountains in the distance. This piece is highly sought after, as a collaboration between two of the most successful and famous ukiyo-e artists of their day. Kanji and seals along the right side of the work. Presented in a gilt frame.
Overall Size: 18 1/2 x 13 1/2 in.
Sight Size: 14 x 9 1/2 in.
Utagawa Hiroshige (1797-1858), born Andō Tokutarō, was a master of ukiyo-e woodblocks and one of the last great artists of the genre. Born into a samurai family, he inherited the role of fire warden for Edo Castle at age 12, a position that provided him with the leisure and income to pursue art, and he studied under master Utagawa Toyohiro. His early work consisted of traditional book illustrations and prints of actors and female beauties, but it was his shift to landscape painting in the late 1820s that brought him fame. A long trip in 1832 inspired two of his most famous series, The Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō and One Hundred Famous Views of Edo, which captured the beauty of Japan's scenery with a subtle use of color and labor-intensive techniques like bokashi (color gradation). His landscapes were an atypical subject for ukiyo-e, which traditionally focused on urban pleasure, and his work had a profound impact on Western art, particularly on Impressionists like Vincent van Gogh who copied some of his prints, making him a central figure in the Japonisme movement. He died in 1858 during the Great Edo Cholera Epidemic, leaving behind a legacy of over 8,000 works.
Born in the Honjo district of Edo in 1786 as Kunisada Tsunoda, Utagawa Kunisada’s family owned a small ferryboat service, and although his father, an amateur poet, died when Kunisada was a child, the family business provided him financial security and the ability to pursue the arts. During his childhood he showed considerable promise in painting and drawing, and thanks to his familial ties with literary and theatrical circles he spent a great deal of time studying actor portraits before being admitted to study under Toyokuni I, the head of the Utagawa school, at the age of 14. His works embodied the traditional subjects of his master such as kabuki, bijin (beautiful women), shunga (erotic prints), and historical prints, with his first known prints dating to 1807 and his first full illustrated book to 1808. Successful throughout his life, he expanded his masters’ ukiyo-e style into new formats, credited with innovative diptych, triptych, and polyptych designs that increased the popularity of woodblock prints exponentially. He often signed his works “Kunisada” or “Ichiyusai,” sometimes with the studio names of Gototei and Kochoro affixed, and in 1844 he adopted the name of his teacher and became Toyokuni III, since Toyokuni’s son-in-law, Toyoshige, had adopted the gō earlier and became Toyokuni II. Kunisada passed away in 1865 in the very same neighborhood where he was born.
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