Sunday, September 14, 2025

Utagawa Hiroshige 
(1797 - 1858)

Utagawa Hiroshige (歌川 広重), was a Japanese ukiyo-e artist, considered the last great master of that tradition. 
Hiroshige is best known for his horizontal-format landscape series The Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō and for his vertical-format landscape series One Hundred Famous Views of Edo. The subjects of his work were atypical of the ukiyo-e genre, whose typical focus was on beautiful women, popular actors, and other scenes of the urban pleasure districts of Japan's Edo period (1603–1868). The popular series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji by Hokusai was a strong influence on Hiroshige's choice of subject, though Hiroshige's approach was more poetic and ambient than Hokusai's bolder, more formal prints. 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 rather labor-intensive techniques.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiroshige

Market at Asakusa in Edo
1853
polychrome woodblock print 
36 x 24 cm
Private collection and several museums 

No comments:

Post a Comment

 David Hockney (1975)    In the early 70’s Hockney is living in Paris for a couple of years. He and Gregory Evans had met in 1971, but in 19...