Ando Hiroshige

Utagawa Hiroshige, also known as Ando Hiroshige, is the great landscape artist of Japanese woodblock prints. His scenes of rain, snow, moonlight and travellers on the road are built from bold, flat areas of colour, with soft gradations in the sky and unusual, often dramatic viewpoints.

He was born in Edo, now Tokyo, and trained in the Utagawa school under Toyohiro. His breakthrough was The Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido (1833 to 1834), and late in life he produced One Hundred Famous Views of Edo. His prints travelled to Europe, where Monet collected them and Van Gogh made oil copies of them.

Our versions, such as Autumn Moon on Ishiyama Temple, are painted by hand in oil after his prints, so expect clean outlines and clear, flat colour rather than heavy texture.