Hiroshige: master printmaker
I have always been drawn by windblown
clouds into dreams of a lifetime of wandering.
Basho, Narrow Road to the Deep North
Henri-Alexis Baatsch’s luxurious Hiroshige (Thames & Hudson, 224p, 150 illustrations in colour, £98/$125) is printed in China, measures 11×14 inches, weighs 7 pounds, has attached double pages with blank versos throughout the book, and a blue ribbon to tie the covers. The high price is good value and will shoot up when the book goes out of print.
When Hiroshige (1797-1858) was still a boy, he inherited his father’s position as fire warden in the imperial castle in Tokyo. The castle was a fire risk from the use of braziers in winter and cooking fires throughout the year, as well as from pipe smokers, oil lamps, lightning strikes and earthquakes. Firefighting was mainly a matter of prevention and surveillance, maintaining the pumps and pipes, and ensuring that sand and water were available for putting out the blazes. This sinecure gave him plenty of time for drawing and printmaking.
Hiroshige, who had been a novice monk, had two wives and three children, including a son who died early. His first wife had secretly provided him with money by selling some of her own clothes and precious combs so he could continue to travel far from Tokyo and draw from life. During his extensive journeys he walked, rode or was carried. At the end of the tiring day he bathed, shaved, smoked, ate, drank, talked to other travelers and even shared a bed in a crowded inn. His diaries include poetry, and his response to the pristine, preindustrial natural world. The artist was stricken down during a cholera epidemic.
Baatsch writes that Hiroshige worked with his assistants, the block-cutter and the printer, “to turn a drawing, not usually made from life, into a carved woodblock and then into a multi-layered print, colored according to his instructions.” The colours were mixed by hand, and the carved woodblocks, paper and inks left no room for error. Complex scenes featuring many figures were difficult to carve. Since the details of a woodblock were quickly worn away during printing, they were hard to reproduce in large print runs.
His distinctive style was influenced by commercial demands and political restrictions. The published prints “had to fit a set of tacitly agreed criteria to ensure that the images were neutral enough to appeal to the greatest number of potential customers, while considered acceptable by the strict government censors.” Hiroshige created more than 8,000 works, including 5,400 colour prints. During his thirty years of intense and astonishing activity, he produced an average of one or two pieces every day. His most popular works had a print run of more than 10,000 copies.
Hiroshige’s prints have a limited range of colours, mainly blue and white, and recurrent elements: moons, snow, birds and trees; rain, rivers, sea, waves and boats; village inns, thatch-roofed wooden houses, the broad hats of the rice-field workers and small figures in the distance. He conceals the faces of his people, and avoids details that characterize their personalities and activities. He specialises in lofty mountains, deep valleys, pure streams, long bridges, surging torrents and towering rocks.
His women carry fans and umbrellas, ornament their elaborately styled black hair with combs and arrow-like rods, wear decorative kimonos and walk with wooden clogs. These slim figures have arched eyebrows, almond eyes with hidden irises, narrow noses and tiny mouths. Hiroshige brilliantly creates the illusion of a stable, harmonious and soon to be lost world.
Baatsch’s excellent book emphasises the artist’s background, biography, travels and techniques, but does not analyze the best scenes: snow, sea, travels, towns, rope baskets and vengeful warriors. Mount Haruna Under Snow: Most of the print—the lofty mountain, rugged cliffs, jagged rocks and narrow trees—is shrouded in snow and seen from a distance. A blood-red triangular-roofed house stands in the center, a blood-red-fenced bridge is stretched across a deep gorge and above the blue sea. A tiny solitary traveler on the curved bridge trudges through the bitter cold, struggling to reach the safe refuge of a country inn. River Fuji in Snow: A cliff covered with snow and trees rises on the right as a wide snow-flecked blue river carrying red boats thrusts through a curving gorge. High above this scene a single man, supported by a stick and carrying a heavy burden yoked on his shoulders, steps precariously—like an acrobat—on a narrow log bridge and seems in danger of falling to his certain death.
Autumn Moon at Ishiyama: Under heavy clouds a bright moon is set against a deep blue sky, trees spike out from a jutting cliff, a curved-roofed red house appears and small boats sail on a tranquil grey-blue sea. A bridge leads away to soft mountains, and the mood is calm and tranquil. Oi River: In a slightly comical contrast, tough, square-jawed, half-naked men have cloth bands tied around their heads and faces straining under their heavy burdens. On shaded wooden palanquins they carry well-dressed, heavily padded and apparently alarmed women, with bent heads and hands clutching the bamboo supports, across the shallow wavy waters to the distant shores.
Women on Pilgrimage to a Shrine: This unusually large, three-panel print has dozens of crowded women holding umbrellas. They are gathering to cross a sandy causeway above rough waves to pray at a temple placed on a massive curved rock, its fringe of trees matching the women’s slim figures. Convoy and Horse Carriages en Route to the Court in Kyoto: Hiroshige had traveled this route as an artist and messenger from Tokyo. A long, curved procession of prancing horses, riders and armed guards, large closed cabins with their food and supplies carried by strong men, winds through an empty sandy landscape.
Night View of Saruwaka-machi: Under a bright moon and dark blue sky, a leisurely procession of about 50 slender pedestrians hold lanterns to light the way. They walk through a wide city street with illuminated shops on either side, watched by some residents from windows on the upper story. Shopkeepers stand outside to lure customers, who diminish in size as they move into the distant perspective. Cherry Blossoms on the Tana River Embankment: Beneath a white curved cottony cloudburst of petals, pedestrians on either side of a bridge stop to appreciate the stunning view. The light blue river, cut by a dark blue current, curves along a soft green embankment. Some privileged viewers enjoy the scene from the open porch of a house above the river.
Basket Ferry, Hida Province: A blazing sun, rising over a mountain and between two massive outcrops, illuminates a river rushing through the rocks of a deep gorge. On both sides of the river and next to high A-shaped wooden structures, six sturdy, bare-legged, hard-toiling men stand next to their straw huts. They pull two thick ropes that carry two sagging baskets above the rocky river to the opposite shore. A different sort of masculine enterprise—unusual for the artist—appears in the historical Revenge of the Ronin Gishi, which portrays a famous event from the early 1700s. After their lord’s forced suicide, his samurai followers killed the official who had wronged him. Two fierce warriors armed with swords have stabbed the stoical victim (no blood is shown), who has arched eyebrows and a downturned mouth. They are about to hang him with a thick, knotted rope descending like a ladder. In the right background, before a square terra-cotta castle, comrades dispatch the rest of their enemies. This famous Chushingura incident has been fictionalised many times and filmed in 1962.
The dominant characteristics of Japanese prints are strong outlines, emphasis on silhouettes, delicate colors, contrasting decorative patterns, direct frontality, asymmetrical compositions, flat two-dimensional space, bold foreshortenings, dramatically angled perspectives and figures cut off at the edge of the picture frames. Hiroshige’s ukiyo-e prints, “images of the floating world,” express the dreamy and ephemeral moments that human beings experience as they indulge in earthly pleasures. These prints portray beautiful women and spectacular landscapes; and have contrasting colors, strong outlines, flattened space, cropped views and high horizons.
Portrait of Émile Zola by Édouard Manet. 1868
Several 19th-century painters adopted both the techniques and the décor of Hiroshige.
In Manet’s Emile Zola (1868) a standing Japanese screen on the left portrays birds and a river. A print of a heavily robed wrestler appears behind the novelist. Van Gogh’s Portrait of Père Tanguy (1887) has seven Japanese prints in the background: flowers, blossoming tree, riverine scene, snowstorm, two elaborately dressed woman with spiked hair and Mt. Fuji. Van Gogh both collected and copied Japanese prints. Lautrec posed for a famous photo in Japanese costume.
La Japonaise by Claude Monet. 1876
In Monet’s Madame Monet in Japanese Costume (1876) her body faces right, but she twists her massive blond hair and pale white face toward the spectator. She holds a colored fan and wears a heavy swirling red robe, spread out on the floor and embossed with a fierce, sword-wielding warrior who contrasts with her gentle appearance. Ten round flat fans with wooden handles decorate the wall behind her. Monet built an arched bridge in his Japanese lotus garden in Giverny.
Mary Cassatt’s finest drypoints (engravings on copper) of 1890-91 express the essential Japanese characteristics, and her female subjects have faintly Japanese features and pale skin. In The Letter the blue colors of the woman’s dress and desk top are sharply divided, and her body is clearly outlined against the flowery pale yellow background.
Hiroshige’s last poem, written as he departed the world and alluding to eastern Japan,
lyrically and stoically observed:
I leave my brush at Azuma.
I go to the Land of the West on a journey
To view the famous sights there.
Jeffrey Meyers taught in Japan in 1965-66. He has published Painting and the Novel, Impressionist Quartet, biographies of Wyndham Lewis and Modigliani, and a book on the Canadian realist painter Alex Colville.
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