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

Description

An ink on paper, Nishiki-e and Yoko-e woodblock landscape showing travelers entering the coastal town of Oiso on a rainy … more An ink on paper, Nishiki-e and Yoko-e woodblock landscape showing travelers entering the coastal town of Oiso on a rainy evening, circa 1850. Signed in Kanji upper left, "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.

Two sets of travelers arrive in the town of Oiso on a bleak, rainy day. The subtitle of the print is "Tora’s Rain," named after the lover of one of the Soga brothers in the Soga Monogatari, an epic tale of revenge set in the twelfth-century. In the story, the Soga brothers commit a massacre to avenge their father’s murder, and are in turn put to death by the shogun. Tora weeps after learning of her lover's fate and her tears cause a torrential downpour over the town of Oiso where she lived. The legend goes that the downpour returns every year to commemorate the date of his death.

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). [H09] less