Hiroshige facts for kids

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Quick facts for kids Hiroshige
広重
Memorial portrait of Hiroshige by Kunisada
Born	Andō Tokutarō 1797 (1797) Edo, Japan
Died	12 October 1858(1858-10-12) (aged 60–61) Edo, Japan
Nationality	Japanese
Education	Toyohiro
Known for	Painting Printing
Notable work	The Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō The Sixty-nine Stations of the Kiso Kaidō One Hundred Famous Views of Edo
Movement	Utagawa school

Utagawa Hiroshige (born Andō Tokutarō; 1797 – October 12, 1858) was a famous Japanese artist. He is known as the last great master of ukiyo-e, a type of Japanese art. Ukiyo-e means "pictures of the floating world." These artworks showed everyday life, beautiful women, and popular actors.

Hiroshige is best known for his amazing landscape prints. His most famous series are The Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō and One Hundred Famous Views of Edo. Unlike many ukiyo-e artists who focused on people, Hiroshige loved to draw nature and travel scenes. His art was very poetic and used colors in a special way. He often used a technique called bokashi, which creates soft color changes.

Hiroshige's work had a big impact on Western art. European artists like Monet and Vincent van Gogh collected and studied his prints. Van Gogh even painted copies of two of Hiroshige's prints: Plum Park in Kameido and Sudden Shower over Shin-Ōhashi bridge and Atake.

Early Life and Art Training
Famous Landscapes and Nature Prints
- Hiroshige's Students
Later Life and Legacy
Hiroshige's Artworks
Influence on Art
Images for kids
See also

Early Life and Art Training

Wind Blown Grass Across the Moon by Hiroshige

Hiroshige learned from Toyohiro of the Utagawa school. This is Returning Sails at Tsukuda by Toyohiro.

Hiroshige was born in 1797 in Edo (which is now Tokyo). His family had a samurai background. His father was a fire warden for their area, a job Hiroshige later took over.

When Hiroshige was young, he had a few different names. His mother and father both died in 1809 when he was only twelve. After his father's death, Hiroshige became the fire warden. This job gave him a lot of free time.

Around age fourteen, Hiroshige started painting. He wanted to learn from a famous artist named Toyokuni. But Toyokuni had too many students. So, Hiroshige was introduced to Toyohiro, another artist from the same Utagawa school. By 1812, Hiroshige was allowed to sign his artworks with his art name, Hiroshige. He also learned other painting styles, including some Western art techniques.

At first, Hiroshige created book illustrations and prints of beautiful women and kabuki actors. This was typical of the Utagawa style. In 1823, he gave his fire warden job to his son.

Famous Landscapes and Nature Prints

It wasn't until 1829–1830 that Hiroshige started making the landscape prints he is famous for. He also began creating many prints of birds and flowers. Around 1831, his series Ten Famous Places in the Eastern Capital came out. This series seemed to be influenced by Hokusai, another famous artist, who had recently published his popular landscape series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji.

In 1832, Hiroshige got a chance to travel along the Tōkaidō route. This road connected the two main cities of Japan, Edo and Kyoto. He sketched the scenery he saw during his trip. When he returned to Edo, he used these sketches to create his very famous series, The Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō. This series includes some of his best-known prints.

Selections from ''The Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō''
Print 11: Hakone
Print 16: Kanbara
Print 46: Rain Shower at Shōno

Because The Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō was so successful, Hiroshige made more travel series. These included Illustrated Places of Naniwa (1834) and Famous Places of Kyoto (1835). Since he had never traveled west of Kyoto, he based his illustrations of places like Naniwa (modern Osaka) on pictures from books.

Hiroshige's first wife helped him pay for his trips. She even sold some of her clothes to help him. She died in 1838, and Hiroshige later remarried.

Between 1835 and 1842, Hiroshige worked on The Sixty-nine Stations of the Kiso Kaidō with another artist, Keisai Eisen. Hiroshige created 46 of the 70 prints in this series. In the last ten years of his life, starting around 1848, Hiroshige made 118 prints for his series One Hundred Famous Views of Edo.

Selections from ''One Hundred Famous Views of Edo'' and ''Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji''
Edo, print 30: The Plum Garden in Kameido
Edo, print 63: Suidō Bridge and the Surugadai Quarter
Thirty-six Views, print 3: Sukiyagashi in the Eastern Capital
Thirty-six Views, print 27: Futami Bay in Ise Province

View of the Whirlpools at Awa triptych, 1857, part of the series "Snow, Moon and Flowers"

Hiroshige's Students

Hiroshige had several students. One of them, Chinpei Suzuki, married Hiroshige's daughter, Otatsu. He was given the art name "Shigenobu." After Hiroshige died in 1858, Shigenobu took on the name "Hiroshige" and is now known as Hiroshige II.

Later, Otatsu separated from Hiroshige II and married another student, Shigemasa. Shigemasa then took the name "Hiroshige" and is known as Hiroshige III. Both Hiroshige II and Hiroshige III continued to make prints in a style similar to their teacher, but they did not become as famous as Hiroshige I. Other students included Utagawa Shigemaru, Utagawa Shigekiyo, and Utagawa Hirokage.

Followers of Hiroshige
Suō Iwakuni, Hiroshige II, 1859
Teppōzu Akashi-bashi, Hiroshige III, c. 1870
Dog stealing a workman's meal from a snow Daruma, Hirokage, c. 1855–56

Later Life and Legacy

View of Kagurazaka and Ushigome bridge to Edo Castle by Utagawa Hiroshige, 1840.

In his later years, Hiroshige still made thousands of prints. People loved his work, but he was not very rich. He was paid less than other popular artists. Even so, he created some of his best art during this time, like his famous One Hundred Famous Views of Edo.

In 1856, Hiroshige became a Buddhist monk. This was the same year he started his One Hundred Famous Views of Edo series. He died at age 62 in 1858 during a big cholera outbreak in Edo. It's not known if the disease caused his death. He was buried in a Zen Buddhist temple in Asakusa.

Just before he died, he wrote a farewell poem:

I leave my brush in the East,
And set forth on my journey.
I shall see the famous places in the Western Land.

The "Western Land" in his poem refers to a part of Japan, but it also means a paradise in Buddhist beliefs.

Even though he was very productive and popular, Hiroshige was not wealthy. His will even included instructions for paying his debts.

Hiroshige's Artworks

A print from The Sixty-nine Stations of the Kiso Kaidō, showing the Wada Bridge.

Hiroshige created over 8,000 artworks in his lifetime. At first, he focused on common ukiyo-e themes like women (bijin-ga) and actors (yakusha-e). But after his teacher Toyohiro died, Hiroshige changed his focus. In 1831, he released his landscape series Famous Views of the Eastern Capital, which was praised for its design and colors.

His success was truly set with The Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō (1833–1834). These designs came from his actual travels along the 490 km (300 mi) Tōkaidō road. He included details about the date, location, and stories from his fellow travelers. This series was incredibly popular. He even reissued it in different versions. Hiroshige went on to create more than 2,000 different prints of Edo and post stations along the Tōkaidō. He also made series like The Sixty-nine Stations of the Kisokaidō (1834–1842) and his own Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji (1852–1858). Landscapes made up the largest part of his estimated 5,000 designs.

Hiroshige became the leading artist for landscape prints. His works were often intimate and smaller in scale compared to older Chinese landscape paintings. His travel prints usually showed travelers on famous routes, enjoying the special sights at different stops. He showed them traveling in rain, snow, and during all seasons.

In 1856, he worked with a publisher to create a series of special, high-quality prints. These prints used advanced techniques like true color gradation, adding mica for a shimmering effect, and embossing. Hiroshige also helped make vertical landscape prints popular with his series Famous Views of the Sixty-odd Provinces. His One Hundred Famous Views of Edo (1856–1859) was hugely popular. He created over 100 prints for this set, and two more were added by Hiroshige II after his death.

Influence on Art

Keisai Eisen was influenced by and worked with Hiroshige. This is Oiwake from The Sixty-nine Stations of the Kiso Kaidō.

Hiroshige was part of the Utagawa school, a group of many artists who were leaders in 19th-century woodblock prints. This school was known for its actor and historical prints, but its artists were skilled in all popular art styles.

During Hiroshige's time, the art print industry was growing fast. More and more people wanted to buy prints. Before this, most print series were small, with only ten or twelve designs. But to meet the demand, artists started making much larger series. You can see this trend in Hiroshige's work, like The Sixty-nine Stations of the Kisokaidō and One Hundred Famous Views of Edo.

Hiroshige is known for his unique style. He often used unusual viewpoints, hints of different seasons, and striking colors. He worked a lot on meisho-e (pictures of famous places). During the Edo period, travel was becoming popular, and people were very interested in seeing new places. Travel guides were common, and towns grew along routes like the Tōkaidō. Hiroshige used his own travels and stories from others to inspire his landscapes. For example, in The Fifty-three Stations on the Tōkaidō (1833), he illustrated funny stories from a popular travel comedy book.

Hiroshige's series The Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō (1833–1834) and One Hundred Famous Views of Edo (1856–1858) had a great influence on French Impressionist artists like Monet. Vincent van Gogh copied two of the One Hundred Famous Views of Edo prints that he owned. Hiroshige's style also influenced a 20th-century Russian art movement called the Mir iskusstva. Artists like Ivan Bilibin and Mstislav Dobuzhinsky were inspired by him. Dobuzhinsky said he liked to choose "unusual" viewpoints, and Hiroshige was a constant example for him. Cézanne and Whistler were also influenced by Hiroshige. In 1883, Louise Gonse, a famous art director, called Hiroshige the greatest landscape painter of the 19th century.

Van Gogh copies of Hiroshige's prints
Sudden Shower Over Shin-Ohashi Bridge and Atake, Hiroshige, 1857. One of the One Hundred Famous Views of Edo.
Bridge in the rain (after Hiroshige) by Vincent van Gogh, 1887.
The Plum Garden in Kameido (1857), from Hiroshige's One Hundred Famous Views of Edo.
Flowering Plum Tree (after Hiroshige) (1887) by Vincent van Gogh.

Images for kids

Moonlight View of Tsukuda with Lady on a Balcony
Sumida River, the Wood of the Water god
Moon over Ships Moored at Tsukuda Island from Eitai Bridge
Evening on the Sumida river
Enjoying the fireworks and the cool of the evening at Ryogoku bridge
Moon Bridge in Meguro, from One Hundred Famous Views of Edo
The Sea at Satta, Suruga Province, from Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji
Kozuke Province, from Famous Views of the Sixty-odd Provinces
Horikiri Iris Garden (Horikiri no hanashōbu), from One Hundred Famous Views of Edo
Fudo Falls, Oji, 1857, from One Hundred Famous Views of Edo
View from Massaki of Suijin Shrine, Uchigawa Inlet, and Sekiya, from One Hundred Famous Views of Edo
Yoroi Ferry, Koami-cho, from One Hundred Famous Views of Edo
Heavy rain on a pine tree, from Eight Views of Ōmi
Fishing boats on a lake, from Eight Views of Ōmi
Full moon over a mountain landscape, from Eight Views of Ōmi
Sokokura, from Seven Hot Springs of Hakone
View of a long bridge across a lake, from Eight Views of Ōmi
A shrine among trees on a moor