Utagawa Hiroshige (1797-1858) Japanese, Woodblock Print. Shows boats on the water with a mountain range in the background and Mt. Fuji in the far distance. Kanji in upper right and lower left corner of image. Written on the back: "From the Series of 53 Views of Tokaido, Post-Station: Hiratsuka, by Hiroshige 1797-1858."
Overall Size: 20 3/4 X 15 5/8 in.
Sight Size: 13 X 8 1/2 in.
#4871 .
Utagawa Hiroshige was born Andō Tokutarō in Edo (now Tokyo) in 1797. He was from a samurai family and the great-grandson of Tanaka Tokuemon, who held a position of power under the Tsugaru clan in the northern province of Mutsu. Hiroshige went through several name changes as a youth: Jūemon, Tokubē, and Tetsuzō. His mother died in early 1809, followed by his older sister and father later that same year, placing him in charge of the family’s fire warden duties for Edo Castle when he was only twelve. The income from this eased some of his burdens, and he began to paint in his spare time. He sought the tutelage of Toyokuni of the Utagawa school, but Toyokuni had too many pupils to make room for him. A local librarian introduced him instead to Toyohiro, of the same school. By 1812 he was permitted to sign his works, which is when he began using the art name Hiroshige. He also studied the techniques of the well-established Kanō school, the nanga whose tradition began with the Chinese Southern School, and the realistic Shijō school, as well as being exposed to the linear perspective techniques of Western art and uki-e. Hiroshige’s apprentice work included book illustrations and single-sheet ukiyo-e prints of female beauties and kabuki actors in the Utagawa style, sometimes signing them “Ichiyūsai” or, from 1832 onward, “Ichiryūsai.” In 1823 he passed his post as fire warden on to his son, though he still acted as an alternate. He declined an offer to succeed Toyohiro upon the master’s death in 1828. It was not until the next year that Hiroshige began to produce the landscapes he is best known for, such as the Eight Views of Ōmi series. He also created an increasing number of bird and flower prints about this time. About 1831 his Ten Famous Places in the Eastern Capital appeared, leading to an invitation to join an official procession to Kyoto the following year. It gave Hiroshige the opportunity to travel along the Tōkaidō route that linked the two capitals, and he sketched the scenery along the way, leading to the best-selling series The Fifty-three Stations of Tōkaidō. He followed up these horizontal-format landscapes with a vertical series titled One Hundred Famous Views of Edo. The subjects of his work were atypical of the ukiyo-e genre, which traditionally focused on beautiful women, popular actors, and scenes of urban pleasure districts. Subtle use of color was essential in Hiroshige’s prints, often printed with multiple impressions in the same area and with extensive use of bokashi (color gradation), both of which were labor-intensive techniques. In 1856 he “retired from the world,” becoming a Buddhist monk. He died in 1858 during the Great Edo Cholera Epidemic, having completed over 8,000 works in his lifetime. Most scholars and collectors see Hiroshige’s death as the beginning of a rapid decline in the ukiyo-e genre, especially in the face of the Westernization that followed the Meiji Restoration of 1868. His work also had a marked influence on western European painting towards the end of the 19th Century, as a leading part of the trend in Japonisme. Western European artists, such as Manet and Monet, collected and closely studied his compositions, and Vincent van Gogh even painted copies of some Hiroshige prints.
