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Saturday, 25 June 2005 16:19 |
WASHINGTON, DC.- East Meets West: Hiroshige at The Phillips Collection will present the exquisite Tokaido Road landscape series by Japanese master printmaker Utagawa Hiroshige (1797–1858), who dominated popular art in Japan for decades and inspired many 19th- and early 20th-century Western artists. “The Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido? series (Hoeido edition) will be displayed along with works from the museum’s permanent collection by European and American artists influenced by Hiroshige, including Pierre Bonnard, Paul Cézanne, Maurice Prendergast, John Twachtman, Oskar Kokoschka, Morris Graves, and Milton Avery.
“Hiroshige’s work is considered to be among the greatest of all Japanese landscape prints,? said Jay Gates, director of the Phillips. “Not only did Hiroshige have a great impact on Western art in general; his work also helped shape museum founder Duncan Phillips’ aesthetic sensibility, especially as it related to landscape painting. We are delighted to offer viewers a chance to see these stunning prints with works from our collection.?
To be shown in its entirety, this poetic and world-renowned set of 55 woodblock prints was the first of Hiroshige’s picture sets about the Tokaido Road and the one that catapulted him to fame in his native Japan. The famous series depicts stops along the fabled Tokaido Road, the Eastern Coast highway linking Edo—present-day Tokyo—with the imperial city of Kyoto. In the 19th century, the nearly
300-mile road was dotted with inns, teahouses, and souvenir shops and had become associated with the “floating world? of travel and the pursuit of transient pleasure.
Depictions of the Tokaido prior to Hiroshige focused on people engaged in familiar activities with conventional landscape views relegated to background scenery. Hiroshige revolutionized the approach to these scenes by showing the lyricism of the landscape as the true subject. For the first time, the whole range of Japan’s scenic beauty was depicted, emphasizing the changing aspects of nature—the effects of time of day, weather, and the seasons—rather than merely recording topography. “Hiroshige was the first Japanese artist to express the humor of travel,? said exhibition curator Susan Behrends Frank, assistant curator at the Phillips. “His prints include amusing and fanciful distortions and exaggerations of the people depicted, as well as of the landscape itself.?
In 1910, at the age of 24, museum founder Duncan Phillips traveled to the Far East—his first foreign trip. While in Japan, he visited many of the places depicted in Hiroshige’s famous Tokaido series, experiencing the beauty and variety of the landscape firsthand. He also saw works by Hiroshige and other ukiyo-e print masters, later acquiring some for his private collection. Phillips became strongly attracted to the Japanese aesthetic and to Hiroshige in particular, adding books about the artist to his personal library. He was captivated by Hiroshige’s use of aerial perspective, his depiction of different times of day (especially twilight and moonlight), and his fascination with the many nuances of the changing seasons and weather conditions on landscape. Hiroshige’s influence can be seen in Phillips’ passion for landscapes and particularly for views that included bridges, a favorite Hiroshige motif; moonlit nights; and scenes spanning the four seasons. In a 1913 essay, Phillips lauded Hiroshige as the Japanese artist who had most influenced many Western artists.
About the artist- Hiroshige, the son of a fire warden with the family name of Ando, was born into the samurai class in Edo in 1797. Orphaned at age 12, two years later the young Hiroshige entered the school of Utagawa Toyohiro (1763?–1828), who was a master printmaker and painter. In 1812, Hiroshige was given the artistic name Utagawa Hiroshige, his teacher’s name and an indication of his graduation. His first print was published in 1818 and during the next decade he created traditional prints of kabuki actors, courtesans, and samurai warriors.
In 1830, he turned his attention to landscapes. Interested in traveling to places famous for their beauty, he is thought to have purchased a position in the official entourage of government officials escorting the ruling shogun’s annual tribute gift of horses to the emperor in Kyoto. This official retinue traveled the Tokaido Road from Edo to Kyoto each summer. Hiroshige began his masterwork “The Fifty-three Stages of the Tokaido? around 1832, with individual prints published the following year. The complete series was published as a two-volume album in 1834. Hiroshige continued to concentrate on landscapes for the next 20 years and, along with fellow ukiyo-e artist and master printmaker Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849), he dominated the popular art of Japan for decades. Hiroshige created an estimated 4,500 prints by the time of his death during the cholera outbreak of 1858.
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