Hiroshige: Prints and Drawings by Matthi Forrer

by Matthi Forrer

Utagawa Hiroshige (1797-1858) holds an assured place in the history of world art as one of the greatest and best-loved masters of the wood-block print. For this book, published on the occasion of an exhibition held at the Royal Academy of Arts in London to mark the bicentenary of the artist's birth, every effort has been made to reproduce the finest early impressions. Each plate is provided with a commentary by Matthi Forrer who, in an introductory essay, examines Hiroshige's life and work, assessing his place in Japanese art and making some important revisions to the generally accepted chronology of his oeuvre. Suzuki Juzo, in his essay, makes a plea for seeing Hiroshige as a whole, drawing attention to aspects of the artist's work and personality that are often overlooked, while Henry D. Smith II places Hiroshige and his art in their social and political context.

Genres: Art, Japan, Nonfiction, History, Reference, Japanese Literature

Paperback

First published January 1, 1997

Reviews

[Nick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Exquisitely beautiful book featuring many paintings by Hiroshige. The accompanying text seems very detailed, going into his life and artistic output. It is a quarto sized volume, so most paintings get the large format treatment they deserve.

[Peter Beck · Rating 5 out of 5]

I could have judged Matthi Forrer’s “Hiroshige” by its cover (full disclosure: I am a sucker for cobalt blue). Hiroshige has been my favorite Japanese artist since discovering his prints during my earliest trips to Japan in the 1980s. His is the Japan of my mind’s eye, before modernization and the advent of the Ministry of Pavement.

I recommend viewing this book in tandem with Adele Schlombs' “Hiroshige” (Taschen) as they could not compliment one another better. Forrer’s “Hiroshige” is based on an exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts in London and includes an essay by one of the leading Hiroshige scholars. Forrer takes a chronological approach, whereas Taschen's is thematic. The images in Forrer’s “Hiroshige” are larger, more numerous and focus more on landscapes.

However, unlike the Taschen volume, Forrer does not include a section on the interaction between Hiroshige and European painters. Monet may have had the largest collection of Hiroshige’s work, but van Gogh is the only one I am aware of who did exact copies of at least two of Hiroshige’s work. Conversely, Hiroshige was influenced by the European Masters. Indeed, the twain were meeting at the very moment when Rudyard Kipling published his “Ballad of East and West.”

[Lydia · Rating 5 out of 5]

An exhibition catalog of woodblock prints from 2001, Royal Academy of Arts, London. Five stars for the intro, history, short bio, and maps on Hiroshige by Forrer. The photos are large, and color good, and descriptions good considering the artist lived from 1797-1858. Although Hiroshige made 5000+ drawings in his lifetime, 150 are covered here in no particular order? Hiroshige wood block prints are amazing for capturing modes of dress, travel, cultural life and business of the common man of the early 1800s. There are series of prints, ie, 53 Stations of the Tokaido Road that are not shown here in their entirety. U.S. Commodore Perry arrived in Japan 1854, and these prints traveled widely and were used for reference by many impressionist painters.

[E. G.]

Introduction

--Hiroshige's Early Years

--Hiroshige's Artistic Development in Landscape Prints

--The Famous Places in Edo

--Views in the Provinces

--Kachōga, Book Illustrations, and Paintings

--The Meaning of Hiroshige in the Arts

Appendix:
Notes
Chronology
List of Works
Select Bibliography
Glossary

[eyrc · Rating 3 out of 5]

tldr: There’s a lot to learn from this book. It’s packed with prints and information, though the writing is dry and not accessible to the everyday reader.

I first saw this book on display at the Metropolitan Museum in New York City. I vaguely flipped through the pages, but in the end, I didn’t buy it because I didn’t want to carry around a heavy book with me for the rest of the day. The next day, I couldn’t get the image of those endless pages of vibrant prints out of my head, so I impulse-purchased it on Amazon. It’s a good book. I don’t regret buying it.

The bulk of this book is about Hiroshige’s prints—a little under 150 of them are displayed here. But before that, to get us started, the book begins with quite a lengthy and heavy introduction. It starts off by telling us a little about Hiroshige’s early life as a firefighter and then his transition into a career as an artist. It then talks about his relationships with his publishers, whose steady encouragement and innovation helped Hiroshige expand his subject repertoire to eventually discover his niche: famous views and bird-and-flower drawings. His famous works, of course, are the Tōkaidō and Kisokaidō series, and the book also discusses his Eight Views of Ōmi and One Hundred Famous Views of Edo series.

There are a couple of points in the introduction that stand out to me. The first is the emphasis on Hiroshige’s unique artistic style, which stems from drawing from observation without too many dramatic or imaginary flourishes (in opposition to Hokusai, who carefully picks and crafts elements into his drawings, almost like setting up a theatre set or scene). I also liked Henry Smith’s section on the two social classes, artisan and samurai. Hiroshige, whose status straddled those of an artisan and a samurai, could enjoy the best of both worlds, and therefore his art depicts a more general and inclusive “truth” for a wider audience. Smith’s inclusion of the impact of the Tenpō Reforms on Hiroshige’s career is also eye-opening.

PROS: Many prints here. It exposed me to a wider variety of Hiroshige’s works and helped me appreciate his versatility.

There are many kinds of prints and series included in this book. Of course, the Tōkaidō and Kisokaidō series, along with his Edo and Provinces series, are here, but also included are some of his bird-and-flower pictures, book illustrations, still lifes, and fan prints. The prints themselves are of extremely high quality, with high-resolution detail and vibrant colours—though a part of me wonders if these colours are a faithful representation, because when I look up these prints on Google Images, the results come back with much more subdued and less saturated colours.

The commentary is helpful. It tells us about the events depicted in the print, any artistic choices (i.e. Western influences, literary references, inspirations, etc.), or any historical context. It also teaches us about woodblock printing techniques such as bokashi (colour gradation), kimetsubushi (to show the pattern of the brushstrokes on the print), and other woodblock-cutting quirks.

For kyōka prints (illustrations with an attached poem), both the Japanese rōmaji and the English translation of the poem are provided, which is helpful for anyone interested in poetry. The book sometimes explains any puns or deeper references in the poem to help the reader better understand its connection with the drawing.

I am particularly fascinated by the inclusion of Hiroshige’s sketches provided at the end of this book. They look like standard pencil sketches—you can even see the grain of the pencil markings. It really drives home the point that Hiroshige was an artist who went through a process, made mistakes and adjustments, and finally settled on a good picture.

CONS: The writing is really heavy and dense, really frustrating to read.

Very scholarly writing, especially in the introduction. The introductory essays feel like articles that could have been submitted to an academic journal. The tone is quite dry, and it feels difficult to stay engaged. The writers throw around a lot of technical jargon, names, and dates without fully explaining their meaning or relevance, as if they expect you to know them off the bat. For example, terms like Nagasaki school, Kanō style, Tokugawa regime, etc. are just thrown around with no explanation. The writing also suffers from an extreme case of name-dropping, whether names of specific places, people, or legends. Sentences are long, with multiple clauses combining many pieces of information into a single dense statement. I have read the introduction multiple times, and I still feel frustrated when reading it. You can probably just skim the introduction because it seems to be written without any intention of being accessible to the average reader.

Another drawback is in both the writing and the presentation. Oftentimes, the commentary on each print talks about what other editions or versions of that same print look like—whether the colours are slightly different, whether the bokashi technique was changed, or how the woodblock cutting was altered. But so what? If the comparison is important, then at least put the two versions side by side so we can see the difference. Some alternate versions are presented at the end of the book, so if you do want to make the comparison, you have to flip the book back and forth like swatting one of Hiroshige’s fan prints. Most of the alternate versions mentioned are not displayed at all. Infuriating.

Ending Thoughts:

The prints themselves are lovely. The writing... not so much. It’s mostly the illustrations that attract me to this book. When I am reading the commentary, I usually omit the last paragraph, which talks about the different versions of the same print, since it’s useless to read about them without a visual reference. It’s a good collection of Hiroshige’s works put together, but the writing just dampens the mood for me.

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

A lovely show catalog with a short biography and history, Hiroshige was an interesting artist, who lived until the arrival of the American black ships, some of his work shows a western influence, see "People on a Moonlit Street" and "People Walking Under Cherry Trees at Night" which are drawn in western perspective. There's still plenty of more traditional landscapes many of which almost feel like a fantasy. There are a few sketches and non-landscape works, but there are some holes that a academic work would have filled in.

Its physical format is a slightly oversize perfect bound standard book, so its not really a coffee table book.

https://data.ukiyo-e.org/kruml/images...
https://www.britishmuseumshoponline.o...

[Garry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very difficult to read type font; artistic but hard to read. Ok, this is an fancy art book, mostly reproductions of some of the best works by Hiroshige and a few essays about the life and work of Hiroshige. A good introduction to Japanese woodblock art from the 17th to 18th century; the shogun era.

[Joe Byrd · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was a great selection of Hiroshige's prints and some drawings.

[Ivo Lederer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful works! Really makes me wanna try woodcut again!