Hiroshige: Artist of the Open Road

A celebration of one of Japan's most talented, prolific, and popular artists

Over a career spanning four decades, the prolific Utagawa Hiroshige (1797-1858) produced thousands of landscape and nature prints, hundreds of paintings commissioned by the samurai elite, and many illustrated books. His work appealed to every stratum of society. While some of his landscape prints, such as Kanbara- Evening Snow and Sudden Shower over Ōhashi and Atake, are well-known examples of Japanese art, the full range of his output is less familiar.

Hiroshige came from a samurai family, but he crossed social boundaries and devoted himself to depicting popular customs and the world around him. His work is distinguished by an air of gentle grace and decorum, perhaps arising partly from his steady temperament. His calm artistic vision sustained his contemporaries through the uncertainties of daily life and changing times. A great colorist, he stands out for discovering a subtle lyricism in the experience of travel and a bond between people and the natural world.

Featuring highlights from leading private collections of Hiroshige prints alongside works by Hiroshige and other artists from the British Museum's outstanding collection of Japanese art and from other major collections, this lavishly illustrated new publication celebrates one of the world's most accomplished artists.

Alfred Haft is JTI Project Curator for the Japanese Collections and curator of the exhibition Hiroshige: Artist of the Open Road at the British Museum. He has contributed to Salon Culture in Japan: Making Art, 1750-1900, Late Hokusai: Society, Thought, Technique, Legacy, Hokusai: Beyond the Great Wave, and Aesthetic Strategies of the Floating World. Capucine Korenberg is senior scientist in the Scientific Research Department at the British Museum.