歌川広重 · 1797–1858
Utagawa Hiroshige
Hiroshige was born into a family of Edo fire wardens and kept the hereditary post for years while training as a print designer, only devoting himself fully to art in the early 1830s. Where Hokusai is dramatic, Hiroshige is lyrical: rain, snow, mist, and dusk carry the emotion of his scenes.
His breakthrough came from the road. The Fifty-Three Stations of the Tōkaidō (c. 1833–34, published by Hōeidō) portrays the great highway between Edo and Kyoto — one print per post station, plus the departure at Nihonbashi and the arrival at Kyoto, 55 designs in all. It became the best-selling print series ever made, and Hiroshige returned to the Tōkaidō in roughly thirty further series.
Van Gogh copied Hiroshige outright in oils; that European appetite drove reprint editions from many publishers across the following century. The Yuyudo, Nihon Mokuhan, and Bijutsusha sets in our shop are chapters of that afterlife — the same 55 compositions, re-carved and re-printed decades apart.
Defining series: The Fifty-Three Stations of the Tōkaidō (c. 1833–34) · 55 designs