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 world. Most notably, since Samurai-era Japan was closed to the outside world, Hiroshige’s work – during a 40-year career – encapsulates this focus on the Japanese lived experience without western influences, giving it its very distinctive style. And a new exhibition at the British Museum brings his work vividly to life.
Cherry Blossoms on a Moonless Night a long the Sumida River, 1847-8. Colour woodblock print triptych. Gift from the collection of Alan Medaugh. © Alan Medaugh.
The British Museum’s show opens with one of Hiroshige’s famed landscape’s Cherry Blossoms on a Moonless Night along the Sumida river, a coloured woodblock-triptych and one of thirty-five gifts of Hiroshige’s work to the museum from Alan Medaugh, an American collector for over fifty years. Medaugh has loaned a further 82 works to add to this substantial exploration of Hiroshige’s art.
Hiroshige was an inveterate traveller on the open road, looking for favourable scenes for his art and to gain commissions from wealthy merchants in the towns he visited. He kept diaries as he travelled, and they are revealing insights of his journeys and the places he explored, often reflected in the final works. Take a look, for example, at the superb Ferry on the Fuji River, Suruga Province from Famous Places in Japan, painted in 1832.
Ferry on the Fuji River, Suruga Province from Famous Places in Japan, c. 1832 © The Trustees of the British Museum
What is special for fans of Hiroshige’s work is that many artworks in this exhibition have never been displayed before; some are rarities, believed to be the only surviving examples. And, for visitors seeing his work for the first time, apart from the intense colour in his work, the sensation of a new insight into Japan in the 1800s with Hiroshige’s reflection on the lifestyle of that era, as in Pleasure Boats at Ryōgoku in the Eastern Capital.
The mentor of this show is the British Museum’s curator of the Japanese collections, Alfred Haft, commenting that “…Hiroshige’s sense of calm and balance captured the imagination of his contemporaries at every level of society.” This show makes clear why Hiroshige’s work was admired and highly collectable.
My favourite section is dedicated to Hiroshige’s portraits of birds. The curator has added the sound of birdsong which creates a pleasurable atmosphere. Seating inclines one to stay too, to observe such beautiful depictions of birds, in prints and books. What’s particularly notable is that during his lifetime Hiroshige created around 5000 scenes for colour woodblock prints, and it’s the vividity of the colours generated that makes these stand out. The colours are extraordinary. Just look at the detail of birds in the woodblock prints of Crane and asters, Three geese and full moon, and Pheasant and chrysanthemums [pictured]. And the fish – some are absolutely huge – cannot be ignored.
Hiroshige had such a talent to capture the happenings – fishing and fishermen – in everyday life, and the beauty of the fish with shiny, jewelled skins and clear eyes. Look out for Suido bridge and Suragadai from ‘100 Famous Views of Edo’, one of Medaugh’s gifts. It depicts an enormous black carp with a gleaming pale-blue eye, which seems to leap into the air high above the city of Edo with Mount Fuji in the far distance. In Japanese legends if a carp jumped to the top of a waterfall it would turn into a dragon. It represents success achieved when one works hard, and highlights the many levels of meaning in Hiroshige’s art that would have been understood by collectors of his work.
Nihonbashi – Morning Scene, from The 53 Stations of the Tōkaidō, c. 1833-35. Colour woodblock print © The Trustees of the British Museum
Japan opened its borders to westerners in 1860. And from this time interest in Japan, its culture, its art, its ceramics, even its way of life, greatly increased. In this exhibition artworks by van Gogh and the American painter James McNeill Whistler show Hiroshige’s legacy in western art. They are examples of how Hiroshige’s paintings – such as The Plum Garden at Kameido from 100 Famous Views of Edo not just informed van Gogh’s Flowering Plum Orchard, but credited it ‘(after Hiroshige)’. Far from the convention of Western impressionists influencing others, it is fascinating to see how Hiroshige’s work, painted in the constraints of Japanese society, influenced artists far beyond Japan.
Hiroshige: Artist of the Open Road runs at the British Museum in London until 7th September 2025. For more information, and for tickets, please visit www.britishmuseum.org.
Images Courtesy and copyright British Museum press. Photography by Matsuba Ryōko.
