Ukiyo-e artist
Utagawa Hiroshige
歌川広重 · 1797–1858 · Edo period
Utagawa Hiroshige (歌川広重) captured the Japanese landscape in woodblock prints better than anyone else. More than any other artist, he taught the world to see Japan as a land of rain, mist, snow and the open road. Hokusai was dramatic. Hiroshige was quiet. His calm scenes, full of weather, carried ukiyo-e into its last golden age.
The road and the seasons
Hiroshige was the son of a low-ranking fire officer in Edo, today's Tokyo. He found his true subject in travel. His breakthrough series, The Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō, followed the great highway between Edo and Kyoto stop by stop. It shows travellers caught in sudden rain or pushing through snow. Later, in One Hundred Famous Views of Edo, he showed his own city from surprising angles. A branch appears right up close, or a bridge in the rain. These views still look strikingly modern today.
How far a rainstorm can travel
His prints reached Europe, and one of the artists who fell for them was Vincent van Gogh. Van Gogh copied two of them in oil, stroke by stroke, to learn how they worked. Through borrowings like these, Hiroshige's rain-streaked skies and flat space found their way into Western art. Hiroshige made thousands of prints. Near the end of his life he became a Buddhist monk. He died in the great cholera epidemic of 1858.
Portrait: Utagawa Kunisada · Public domain · via Wikimedia Commons
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