Utagawa Hiroshige[a] (歌川 広重) or Andō Hiroshige[b] (安藤 広重), born Andō Tokutarō (安藤 徳太郎; 1797 – 12 October 1858), 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 Tōkaidō and for his vertical-format landscape series One Hundred ...
Hiroshige was a Japanese artist, one of the last great ukiyo-e (“pictures of the floating world”) masters of the colour woodblock print. His genius for landscape compositions was first recognized in the West by the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists.
Utagawa Hiroshige is recognized as a master of the ukiyo-e woodblock printing tradition, having created 8,000 prints of everyday life and landscape in Edo-period Japan with a splendid, saturated ambience. Orphaned at 12, Hiroshige began painting shortly thereafter under the tutelage of Toyohiro of the Utagawa school. His early work of narrow, vertical landscapes picturing thatched houses ...
Hiroshige's grandfather, Mitsuemon, was an archery instructor who worked under the name Sairyūken. Hiroshige's father, Gen'emon, was adopted into the family of Andō Jūemon, whom he succeeded as fire warden for the Yayosu Quay area. Hiroshige went through several name changes as a youth: Jūemon, Tokubē, and Tetsuzō.
A new exhibition dedicated to Hiroshige at the British Museum introduces visitors to the full depth and complexity of his celebrated prints.
Hiroshige is known as the last great master of Japanese traditional woodblock printing, imbuing the Japanese landscape with a magnificent lyricism.
The Woodblock Prints of Utagawa Hiroshige: a comprehensive illustrated catalogue and reference.
Utagawa Hiroshige (1797-1858) is a masterful Japanese artist. Born in Edo (now Tokyo) into a samurai family, he is one of Japan’s foremost painters in the early-mid nineteenth century, toward the end of Japan’s samurai era. Hiroshige was a prolific artist of hugely popular prints that encompassed everyday life through famous places (meisho), cityscapes, landscapes, wildlife and the natural ...