Two Utagawa Hiroshige (Japanese, 1797-1858) Woodblock Prints

Utagawa Hiroshige 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 Tokaido and for his vertical format landscapes series One Hundred Famous Views of Edo. The subjects of his work were atypical of the uikyo-e genre, whose typical focus was on beautiful women, popular actors, and other scenes of the urban pleasure districts of Japan’s Edo period. The 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 with extensive use of bokashi, both of which were rather labor-intensive techniques.