'View of Shirasuka', Circa 1946, After Utagawa Hiroshige 歌川廣重, Ukiyo-E Woodblock, Tokaido

Description

An ink on paper, Nishiki-e and Yoko-e woodblock landscape showing a ferry sailing across Lake Hamana. Signed in Kanji lower … more An ink on paper, Nishiki-e and Yoko-e woodblock landscape showing a ferry sailing across Lake Hamana. Signed in Kanji lower right, "Hiroshige Ga" for Utagawa (Ando) Hiroshige (Japanese, 1797-1858) and printed circa 1946 by Gihachiro Okuyama (1907-1981). An exceptionally crisp image with fresh color, printed on traditional Washi paper and showing delicate bokashi gradation of sumi ink in the horizon and upper sky. Sheet Dimensions: 10.25 H x 15.25 W inches.

A large daimyo procession moves down the hillside on our right. In the distance are fishermen going about their daily routines. The sails of large ships appear on the horizon. The hill in the foreground was known as Shiomizaka, or “Tidal Viewing Slope”, and it looked out over the former location of the post station, which was destroyed by a tsunami in 1707. The post station was subsequently moved inland to the plateau where the artist presumably stood to take in this view.

This example is from Okuyama's mid-century reissue of the artist's "Fifty Three Stations of the Tokaido Road", a series of Ukiyo-e prints created between 1833 and 1855. These depicted various views of the most important five main trade roads connecting Kyoto to modern-day Tokyo during the Edo period (1603-1868). A comic poem or "kyoka" also appears, inscribed in elegant kuzushiji script.

The best-known student of Utagawa Toyohiro (ca.1773-1829), Utagawa Hiroshige studied the Western style introduced by the founder of the Utagawa school, Toyoharu (1735-1814). Together with Hokusai, Hiroshige is considered one of the two leading Japanese landscape painters of the nineteenth century and he became one of the foremost representatives of the Ukiyo-e movement. He created more than 400 woodcut and woodblock prints of actors, warriors, courtesans and, particularly, naturalistic landscapes of Japan. Hiroshige's work was highly regarded in his own time and also became influential in the development of European Modernist painting of the late nineteenth century, especially that of the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists including Monet, Van Gogh and Gauguin.

(For descriptions of the individual works, we are indebted to Nicholas Scaglione and Professor Ingrid Furniss of Lafayette College). [H33] less