Hiroshige: Landscape, Cityscape: Woodblock Prints in the Ashmolean
Hiroshige: Landscape, Cityscape: Woodblock Prints in the Ashmolean
Authors: Clare Pollard and Ito Watanabe
Publisher: Ashmolean Museum, Oxford
ISBN 9781854442956
Pages: 144
Illustrations: colour:30
Dimensions: Paperback with flaps
Aimed at a general audience, this beautifully produced book does justice to the color and impact of Hiroshige's magnificent prints. Fifty of the master's landscape and cityscape woodblocks are explored in-depth as the authors provide the historical background for his work -- the context of Japan's booming 19th century woodblock print industry and the development of the landscape print as a genre. Included are explanations of the processes and techniques used in traditional Japanese woodblock print-making.
This is the complete catalogue of an exhibition at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, written by Michael Phillips, world authority on Blake. The exploration is in three basic sections -- the first, Blake’s early career and apprenticeship and includes his drawings for Westminster Abbey, his schooling and his attraction for great Renaissance master printmaker-artists. . .
Hiroshige, born in 1797, lived until 1858. We learn why he became perhaps the most renowned of all Japan's woodblock print designers as his life and career are put into perspective. Hiroshige's colors and designs are as alive today as they were in his time; his prints have remained hugely successful both in Japan and in the West. Their unusual compositions, humorous depictions of people involved in everyday activities and masterly expression of weather, light and season, influenced our greatest artists, from Monet to van Gogh to Toulouse-Lautrec. .
An exhibition of this work shows at the Ashmolean Museum until February 15 of 2015.
Clare Pollard is the Curator of Japanese Art at the Ashmolean Museum. Mitsuko Itō (Watanabe) is Assistant Director at the University of Oxford Centre for Asian Archaeology, Art and Culture and Research Associate in the Ashmolean Museum’s Department of Eastern Art
Contents
Reading a Japanese Print
Preface
Utagawa Hiroshige (1797 to 1858), Woodblock Print Designer
I Views along the Tokaido
II Views of the Provinces
III Views of Edo
IV Views of Mount Fuji
Further Reading