Utagawa Hiroshige: The Complete Story
Utagawa Hiroshige was the Japanese woodblock master of rain, snow and the open road. His prints of travelers crossing bridges in sudden downpours, of Mount Fuji glimpsed across the rooftops, are among the most beloved images Japan ever produced, and they quietly helped change Western art forever.
Hokusai gets more headlines, but it was often Hiroshige's mood, his weather and his daring angles, that the Europeans copied most directly.
Born: Edo, now Tokyo, 1797
Known for: ukiyo-e woodblock landscapes, rain and snow scenes
Died: Edo, 1858
The artist of the road
Hiroshige's breakthrough came with The Fifty Three Stations of the Tokaido, a series following the great highway between Edo and Kyoto, stop by stop. Travelers shelter from rain, climb misty passes, eat at roadside inns.
He turned the simple act of a journey into poetry, and the prints sold in huge numbers to ordinary people who could never make the trip themselves.
Weather as the subject
His real genius was atmosphere. Few artists anywhere have painted rain so well, slanting grey lines over a bridge full of hurrying figures, or snow muffling a silent village. He made you feel the cold and the damp.
His late masterpiece, One Hundred Famous Views of Edo, uses daring close ups and steep, surprising viewpoints, a branch of blossom filling the foreground while tiny people cross far below.
How he reached Van Gogh
When Japan reopened to trade, these cheap prints flooded into Europe, often as wrapping paper, and stunned artists who had never seen flat color, empty space and cropped, off center composition.
Vincent van Gogh collected Hiroshige and painted careful oil copies of his prints to learn from them. The movement this craze sparked has its own page in what is Japonisme.
Quick answers about Hiroshige
What is Hiroshige famous for?
Ukiyo-e woodblock landscapes, especially the Tokaido road and views of Edo. See what is a woodcut.
How did he influence Western art?
His flat color and graphic composition shaped the Impressionists and Van Gogh, who copied his prints.
Hiroshige or Hokusai?
Both were ukiyo-e giants. Hokusai is bolder and graphic, Hiroshige softer and more atmospheric.
Why he still matters
Hiroshige proved that a cheap print of a rainy bridge could be high art, and his way of seeing reshaped painting on the other side of the world. Every cropped, off center photograph owes him a little.
One last fact. Late in life he became a Buddhist monk, and he died in the great Edo cholera epidemic of 1858, leaving a farewell poem about setting off on one last journey.