'View of Mitsuke' After Utagawa Hiroshige, Ukiyo-E Woodblock, Tokaido, Edo

Description

An ink on paper, Nishiki-e and Yoko-e woodblock landscape showing a view of Mitsuke in Niigata Prefecture, Japan, circa 1850. … more An ink on paper, Nishiki-e and Yoko-e woodblock landscape showing a view of Mitsuke in Niigata Prefecture, Japan, circa 1850. A figure on horseback approaches a group of people unloading a traditional wasen boat moored to the shore. Signed in kanji upper left, "Hiroshige Ga" for Utagawa (Ando) Hiroshige (Japanese, 1797-1858) and printed circa 1950. A crisp and fresh image with good color, printed on traditional Washi paper and showing delicate bokashi gradation of sumi ink in the horizon and upper sky. Sheet dimensions: 8.25"H x 11.25"W

This work is from a 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 of the Edo period's five main trade roads, that connecting Kyoto to modern-day Tokyo. A comic poem or "kyoka" also appears, inscribed in elegant kuzushiji script.

The best-known student of Utagawa Toyohiro (ca. 1773-1829), 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 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 and Van Gogh. [MM] less