Ueno Tôeizan no zu - Tôto meisho - SOLD

Ueno Tôeizan no zu (Tôeizan Temple at Ueno) is a polychrome woodblock print (ink and colour on paper) by Utagawa Hiroshige (Japanese, 1797-1858). A superb plate, from the print suite Famous Places in the Eastern Capital (Tôto meisho),designed between 1832 and 1838. Published by Sanoya Kihei (Kikakudô) (Japanese)

Signed on plate and in a cartouche “Hiroshige ga”???.

With the marks of the Censor's seal: kiwame ??:?

Horizontal Oban. In fair condition, with vivid colours, this plate has visible aging signs (yellowing of the paper, discolorations, abrasions, and holes). Although some thinner areas and some lacks on the margins, this ukiyo-e print has preserved still today its beauty and charme.

Collect this superb ukiyo-e, depicting a pleasant Asian landscape animated by workers, to embellish your house with a sophisticated Oriental touch!

CATALOGUE RAISONNÉ Sakai, Hiroshige Edo fûkei (1996), list #51.4, pl. 479; Ukiyo-e shûka 14 (1981), Hiroshige list, p. 244, horizontal ôban #66.02; Matsuki 1939, #22

Utagawa Hiroshige (Japan, 1797-1858) Born Ando Hiroshige, Hiroshige was the best known Japanese ukiyo-e  artist, considered the  last great master of that tradition.

Remembered for his horizontal-format landscape series, the obans of the print series The Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido and for his vertical-format landscape series One Hundred Famous Views of Edo. The subjects of his work were atypical of the ukiyo-e genre, whose typical focus was on beautiful women, popular actors, and other scenes of the urban pleasure districts of Japan's Edo period (1603–1868).

The Hiroshige's death marked the beginning of a rapid decline in the ukiyo-e genre, especially in the face of the westernization that followed the Meiji Restoration of 1868, but the Hiroshige trends returned under the name of “Japonism” on Western European painting towards the close of the 19th century. Famous artists, such as Manet and Monet, collected and closely studied Hiroshige's compositions.