Beschreibung:

Lot details By Utagawa Hiroshige (1797 – 1858), signed Hiroshige ga Japan, 1834 – Meiji era reprint Color woodblock print on paper. Horizontal oban. Signed Hiroshige ga, censor’s seal: kiwame; publisher Takenouchi Magohachi (Hoeido). Titled Shono, hakuu (Shono: Driving Rain), number 46 in the series Tokaido gojusan tsugi no uchi (Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido Road). Sudden Shower at Shono is one of the best-known scenes from Hiroshige's series. It showcases his skill in capturing the intensity of a rainstorm, with palanquin bearers and villagers rushing through the rain. The design is purely imaginative, as Shono doesn't match the depicted scenery. The umbrella bears inscriptions related to the publisher and series titles. SIZE of the sheet 25.3 x 38.6 cm Condition: Good condition with wear and browning of paper. Slightly faded colors and minor losses along the edges. Provenance: Estate of an Austrian collector, the collection was assembled in the 1980s – 1990s through purchases at Galerie Zacke and other specialized galleries in Vienna. Utagawa Hiroshige (1797 – 1858), also known as Ando Hiroshige, is recognized as one of the last great masters of the ukiyo-e (“pictures of the floating world”) woodblock printing tradition. His style can be characterized in the genre of landscape print, innovated by his early contemporary Hokusai (1760-1849). Hiroshige can be attributed to having created over 5,000 prints of everyday life and landscape in Edo-period Japan. Inspired by Katsushika Hokusai’s popular Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji, Hiroshige took a softer, less formal approach with his Fifty-Three Stations of the Tokaido (1833–1834), completed after a trip he made between Edo and Kyoto, which is acclaimed to be perhaps his finest achievement. He made numerous other journeys within Japan and issued a series of such prints, expressing in great detail the poetic sensibility inherent in the climate and topography of Japan and its people. Hiroshige’s prolific output was somewhat due to his being paid very little per series. Still, this did not deter him, as he receded to Buddhist monkhood in 1856 to complete his brilliant and lasting One Hundred Famous Views of Edo (1856–58). He died in 1858, 10 years before Monet, Van Gogh, and a lot of Impressionist painters became eager collectors of Japanese art. Museum comparison: A closely related print is in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, accession number RES.51.73.