#hiroshige

Detail of New Year's Eve Foxfires at the Changing Tree, Ōji (ca. 1857) by Utagawa Hiroshige

Utagawa Hiroshige 歌川広重 Mimasaka Province, Yamabushi Valley (Mimasaka, Yamabushidani), from the series Famous Places in the Sixty-odd Provinces [of Japan] ([Dai Nihon] Rokujūyoshū meisho zue) Transliterated Title: [Dai Nihon] Rokujūyoshū meisho zue: Mimasaka, Yamabushidani Edo period, 1853 (Kaei 6, 12th month)

Title: The Sea at Satta, Suruga Province, from the series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji Artist: Utagawa Hiroshige, né Andō Tokutarō (Japanese, 1797-1858) Date: 1st half of 19th century Genre: seascape Movement: Utagawa School Style: ukiyo-e Period: Edo Medium: color woodcut Dimensions: 37 cm (14.6 in) high x 24.5 cm (9.6 in) wide Location: Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, USA

"This is a comic print. It presents a fairly simple comic situation and does not call for much by way of comment. An irate householder, clad in night dress (his bed is shown in the background at the left), is shown assailing a slumbering, well-fed cat who has allowed white rats to disturb the man's sleep. ...The print is signed, Hiroshige gihitsu ("Hiroshige, painted for fun").

Woodblock print 73.5 x 25 cm. (29 x 10 ⅞ in.)

Imagine building a fake mountain just so people could pretend to climb Fuji without leaving the city. That's exactly what Edo-period entrepreneurs did - and Ando Hiroshige made it the subject of one of the most quietly radical compositions in ukiyo-e history. In "New Fuji, Meguro" from his One Hundred Famous Views of Edo (1857), Hiroshige puts the knockoff in the foreground and the real thing in the back. That steep green miniature Fuji dominates the left half of the print, dwarfing the actual snow-capped peak on the horizon. The twin triangles - artificial and authentic - force you to ask which one matters more. The tiny figures on top of the fake summit stand gazing outward, while we gaze at them. Hiroshige flipped the hierarchy of nature and spectacle in ways Baudrillard would have recognized instantly. Prussian blue imported from Europe, a coral bokashi glow at the horizon, full-crowned sakura lining the foreground - this wasn't tradition. This was a dying master (gone by 1858) burning every rule about depth, scale, and subject. The Impressionists later lost their minds over these prints. Van Gogh owned copies of this exact series. Quelle: meisterdrucke.com

Some favourite details from the Hiroshige exhibition currently at the British Museum

Foxfires at the Changing Tree, art by Utagawa Hiroshige (1857)