Utagawa Hiroshige

Utagawa Hiroshige was a Japanese ukiyo-e artist of the nineteenth century. He was born in Edo, the city now called Tokyo, in 1797, and died there on 12 October 1858.

He is also known as Andō Hiroshige, and his birth name was Andō Tokutarō. He is considered the last great master of the ukiyo-e tradition. He worked as a painter, a draftsman and a maker of woodblock prints, and he belonged to the Utagawa school.

His notable works include One Hundred Famous Views of Edo, Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, Eight Views of Ōmi, The Sixty-nine Stations of the Kiso Kaidō and Famous Views of the 60-odd Provinces. His prints are held by many museums and libraries, among them the Tokyo National Museum, the National Diet Library, the British Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Rijksmuseum, the Guimet Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Brooklyn Museum, the Library of Congress and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Two of his prints are shown here, both woodblock prints in ink and color on paper from Japan’s Edo period (1615–1868), and both in the Met’s Asian Art department. Sudden Shower at Shōno comes from his series Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō and is dated 1834–35. It shows figures and trees in a sudden shower of rain. The image measures 9 3/4 by 14 1/4 inches, and the Met acquired it in 1914 through the Rogers Fund.

A Snowy Evening at Kanbara Station is dated about 1833–34. It shows houses and mountains in snow at Kanbara on an evening, as its title says. The image measures 9 1/2 by 14 1/8 inches, and the Met acquired it in 1918, also through the Rogers Fund.