Utagawa Hiroshige
1832-35

Waxing Crescent Moon
A Horned Owl
Taking a Boat Ride
The Wind in the Pines Flowing Into its Ears
Like a Song on the Koto
Hachijintei

Hachijintei was a lifelong collaborator of Hiroshige’s and created the most poems for Hiroshige’s works. In this print, a waning crescent moon is depicted in a diagonal composition with a horned owl resting on a pine branch. As the poem describes a waxing crescent moon, it is thought that Hiroshige flipped the moon to create a more balanced composition over accuracy. Pine cones, that are designated as an autumnal poetic term, are also depicted.

Utagawa Hiroshige
1857

The viewer’s eye is drawn to a soaring eagle whose wings seem to embrace the print. This is the print for the sea off the coast of Fukagawa Susaki in the series One Hundred Famous Views of Edo. Mount Tsukuba looms up in the background. The jūman tsubo in the title translates as “100,000 tsubo” (one tsubo = about 3.3 square meters). It indicates land in the Fukagawa district that was reclaimed and transformed into new fields for farming. The land was not suitable for crops, however, and was left idle for a long time. While Hiroshige was alive, it belonged to the Hitotsubashi clan.
The grand depiction of the eagle in the foreground creates the sensation of a look far into the distance. The landscape is basically colored in three shades of blue and white, which make it appear that a heavy snow is falling. The crisp wintry scene echoes the sharp eye of the eagle glancing straight at the lone barrel floating down the river.

Utagawa Hiroshige
1857

One of the prints in the One Hundred Famous Views of Edo series, a masterpiece from Hiroshige’s later years. Caught in the rain, people are hurrying across the Shin-Ōhashi Bridge spanning the Sumida River. Although their faces are hidden by umbrellas (one by a straw raincoat), each has an eye-catching motion or demeanor. A humorous note is added by the three men sharing one umbrella in the center; apparently two of them were not prepared for the sudden evening shower. The “Atake” in the title is the name of a district on the opposite coast. There, the hard rainfall in the center of the print turns into a mist. Boats and buildings are depicted in silhouette.
Vincent van Gogh emulated this print in his Bridge in the Rain (After Hiroshige), which he painted in the autumn of 1887. He was particularly fond of the way Hiroshige rendered people, and made a point of leaving a note indicating that his painting was a reproduction. The rendering of the rain covering the whole print reportedly had a strong influence on Gogh’s paintings of rainy landscapes.

Utagawa Hiroshige
1857

Because the foam of waves was called “wave flowers,” this print, which is the flowers of the Snow, Moon, and Flowers trio, depicts a whirlpool in the Naruto Strait. The landscape as viewed from Ōgejima Island. Awaji Island is rendered in an exaggerated form on the upper right part of the left print of the triptych. Hiroshige reportedly crossed to Kuki in Shikoku in 1837, but it is not certain that he went to Awaji Island.

Utagawa Hiroshige
1857

In the Snow, Moon, and Flowers series, Kanazawa Hakkei was chosen for the print to express the moon. A flock of geese and Kanazawa’s Hirakata Bay are illuminated by a full moon. In the center is a sand bar linked to and leading from the island of Nojima amid the scenery spread around it on an autumn night. Kanazawa Hakkei was a celebrated sight in Musashi Province. Hiroshige stopped there on his way to Hakone in May or June 1853, and made sketches of its scenery. The print bears a strong resemblance to Kanazawa Hakkei as Viewed from the Brush-Taking Pine at Nōkendō, one of the prints in the Illustrated Diary of a Trip to Famous Places in Musashi and Sagami Provinces, which is displayed in this exhibition. Scholars have recognized two types of prints in this series that differ in respect of the color used for the sky. One type is this print, which uses Prussian blue with shading. The other uses two kinds of blue and has a darker sky.

Utagawa Hiroshige
1857

This is the Snow print in the series of three prints produced by Hiroshige in 1857. Titled Snow, Moon, and Flowers, the series is one of his major works in his later years. It was printed by Okazawaya Taheiji, a small publisher, but some estimate that the series was ordered by a sponsor positioned between the artist and the publisher. The titles of the respective three works are written in mutually different calligraphy styles. The title of Snow is written in the semi-cursive (running) script.
The big triptych is a bird’s eye view of the mountains along the Kiso post road in a single print in black and indigo.

Utagawa Hiroshige
1830-44

Like a Chinese landscape painting, the composition exaggerates the actual scenery even more than does No. 60. As such, Hiroshige is thought to have given precedence to his intention and creativity for it. As in No. 60, he depicts a bridge and a valley, but the mountains and waterfall in the distance are positioned above the bridge. In addition, the use of Prussian blue (aka Hiroshige blue) for the deep parts of the river conveys its depth. While this, too, is a view at night, the accumulating snowfall, hazy sky, and leisurely flow of the river combine to make this scene on a wintry night a somehow tranquil one.

Utagawa Hiroshige
1830-44

A famous bridge in the eastern part of Kōshū Province is lit by the moon, and the Katsura River flows vigorously through the valley beneath it. The use of a vertically long rectangle for the print enables a view of the background landscape with a deep, dynamic perspective that seems like a peek into the space between the bridge and the valley. Hiroshige was reportedly inspired by a trip he took to the capital of Kōshū Province for the purpose of producing a decorative painted curtain in 1841 at the request of a party there. No. XX and No. XY were his first works of the hanging scroll type made by joining two vertically long rectangular sheets of the ōban large size. According to a document recording sketchbooks from this trip, he sketched Saru Bridge on April 4th.