HIROSHIGE: Celebrated Views of the Eastern Capital:
Ronin Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of 24 prints from Hiroshige’s various “Easten Capital” series. These prints, dating from the 1840’s, depict life in and around Edo or today’s Tokyo, literally translated as Eastern Capital. Edo was Hiroshige’s home and the center of the Japanese print world. These designs show the vibrant atmosphere that surrounded the city in every conceivable condition: moonlight, rain, snow, spring and summer, desolate, festive, crowed and lonely. They are a wonderful view of a time gone by, a place for all seasons, an image of a floating world.
HIROSHIGE (1797-1858): In the canon of ukiyo-e there is one name above all others that evokes the tender, lyrical beauty of the Japanese landscape – Hiroshige. Born in Edo with the name Ando Tokutaro, he grew up in a minor samurai family that belonged to the Edo's firefighting force. At the age of fifteen, the young man entered an art apprenticeship with the celebrated Utagawa Toyohiro and was so successful that he was bestowed with the artist name, Hiroshige after only a year. Despite this, his artistic genius went largely unnoticed until his reknown series The 53 Stations of the Tokaido. With the Tokugawa Shogunate relaxing centuries of age-old restrictions on travel, urban populations embraced travel art and Hiroshige arguably became one of the most prominent and successful artist of the ukiyo-e school.
Hiroshige’s work had a profound influence on the Impressionists of Europe and America: Toulouse Lautrec, Degas, Monet and Whistler to name a few., Van Gogh literally copied two prints from 100 Famous Views of Edo . In 1858 at the age of sixty-two, Hiroshige died as a result of the Edo cholera epidemic but his work continues to convey the beauty of Japan and provide insight into the everyday life of its citizens.
