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Utagawa Hiroshige — One Hundred Famous Views of Edo (Meisho Edo Hyakkei), 1856–1858

Meisho Edo Hyakkei (名所江戸百景, One Hundred Famous Views of Edo), 1856–1858, by Utagawa Hiroshige (1797–1858). Series of 119 woodblock prints (including a title sheet); ōban vertical format. Published by Uoya Eikichi. Hiroshige's final and most radical landscape series, featuring extreme perspective shifts, bold foreground cropping, and vivid atmospheric colour. Van Gogh directly copied two prints from this series.

Scholarly Significance

Anchor Hiroshige's late landscape output and Japonisme's direct impact on Van Gogh with the One Hundred Famous Views of Edo series.

Notes

  • ·Published by Uoya Eikichi in multiple installments 1856–1858; series was unfinished at Hiroshige's death (September 1858).
  • ·The series is notable for extreme perspectival devices: prints 30 (Plum Park, Kameido) and 58 (Sudden Shower over Shin-Ohashi bridge) use radical foreground cropping.
  • ·Van Gogh copied Plum Park, Kameido (no. 30) and Sudden Shower over Shin-Ohashi (no. 58) as oil paintings in 1887 — direct evidence of Japonisme.
  • ·The vertical ōban format — unconventional for landscape — creates dramatic foreground/background contrasts unlike Hiroshige's earlier horizontal landscape series.
  • ·The series depicts the annual festival calendar, four seasons, and topographic landmarks of Edo with atmospheric intensity.