Martha Graham
94% Profile Match
Utagawa Kunisada, memorial portrait of Hiroshige, 1858, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, JP2832, Open Access (CC0) · Memorial portrait of Hiroshige, polychrome woodblock print by Utagawa Kunisada, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, accession JP2832 (Henry L. Phillips Collection, Bequest of Henry L. Phillips, 1939). The Met's Open Access API flags the object as public domain and the Commons copy carries a CC0 declaration. A posthumous memorial print made after his death in October 1858, so shown as a later depiction and not as a likeness taken in his lifetime (the Met record's date field gives only the artists' life dates; the 1858 date is Commons's). Original image 2631 x 3841 pixels from the Met, downscaled to 822 x 1200 with no cropping and no upscaling. · CC0 1.0 Universal (Met Open Access)
artist · 19th Century
Utagawa Hiroshige
1797–1858
Known For
artisticcultural
Not yet included in personality matching — the documented evidence doesn't yet cover enough of the personality model. Everything else on this page is fully available.
Trait Constellation
Key Achievements
His Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido (1833-34), prints of the road between Edo and Kyoto, established his fame as a landscape printmaker and was an immediate commercial success.
He helped make landscape a major ukiyo-e subject, replacing the declining actor and beauty prints with poetic views of weather, seasons and everyday travellers, and followed the Tokaido with series such as the Kiso Road prints.
His last series, One Hundred Famous Views of Edo (1856-58), was left unfinished at his death and completed by his successor Hiroshige II; auction-house writers credit his prints with influencing European painters such as Van Gogh.
Moments That Reveal Them
In the Edo series, begun in 1856 after the 1855 earthquake, he often chose minor local sites and used bird's-eye views and sharp near-far contrasts to make them worthy of the name 'famous places'.
This is consistent with an original approach to familiar subjects. Creative Originality
Scholars report that he continued working on the Edo series until the last moments of his life.
This is consistent with sustained, steady working habits. Discipline
Turning Points
In the early 1830s, after his teacher Toyohiro's death, he turned seriously to landscape prints; scholars say the exact motives are unclear but the older actor and beauty traditions had stagnated.
This is consistent with a willingness to move toward a market opening, though his motives are not documented. Opportunity Sensing
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Sources
- Utagawa Hiroshige (Q200798), verified live via the Wikidata API (2026-10-26): label 'Utagawa Hiroshige', description 'Japanese ukiyo-e artist (1797-1858)', born 1797, died 1858-10-12, citizenship Japan, Korean label present, P18 image 'Memorial Portrait of Hiroshige, by Kunisada.jpg'. Orientation only; not used as support for any row.
- Asian Art Museum (San Francisco), Education 'Artist Profile: Utagawa (Ando) Hiroshige (1797-1858)', read in full. CANONICAL SIGNIFICANCE SOURCE: born in Edo to a fire-brigade warden's family, orphaned at 13 and inheriting the post, his turn from Toyokuni to Toyohiro, retirement as fire warden to become a full-time artist (given there as 1822), his first landscapes (Famous Places in the Eastern Capital, 1825) adopting Western conventions, the Tokaido journey of 1832 (hedged as 'reportedly'), the Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido, the Kiso Road series begun with Eisen, and the One Hundred Views of Edo (1856-1858). Museum teaching text; admiring, and its account of why a samurai became an artist is explicitly speculative.
- Takaaki Kumagai, essay on 'Fudo Waterfall at Oji' from One Hundred Famous Views of Edo, Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas (accession 1999.0151), read in full: his fire-brigade background and the speculation about fire-tower viewpoints, landscape as a market choice after ukiyo-e traditions stagnated, the early-1830s turning point whose 'exact motives remain unclear', the 1832 official journey, scholars' contrast between Hokusai's experiment and Hiroshige's lyricism, the choice of minor sites in the Edo series after the 1855 earthquake, and his work on it until his last moments. Academic museum essay citing Poster, Smith and Buck (2001); it contains an internal slip about the year of the cholera epidemic (1859 instead of 1858).
- Sotheby's, '21 Facts About Utagawa Hiroshige' (sothebys.com article), read in the biographical and works sections: Edo birth to a low-ranking samurai fire-warden family, orphaned young, his rejection by Toyokuni and Toyohiro before being taken in, the roughly 8,000 works he is thought to have produced, the Tokaido series' success and more than 20 later Tokaido series, the vertical format of the Edo series completed by Hiroshige II, his bokashi colour technique, reported poverty and debts, his 1856 retirement as a Buddhist monk, and his influence on European painters. Auction-house marketing copy: enthusiastic, partly unsourced, and its account of his rejection by both masters differs from the Asian Art Museum's, so it is used only for corroboration.
- Art Institute of Chicago, 'Catalogue of a Loan Exhibition of Colour Prints by Ichiryusai Hiroshige, 1797-1858' (April 1912), introduction read in full (about 4 pages, via the Internet Archive): his training under Toyohiro after Toyokuni's refusal, the Toto Meisho series, the publisher Takeuchi's Tokaido commission and its instant success, the possible journey to Kyoto (date uncertain), the change of his artist name to Ichiryusai ('One Standing Alone'), edition after edition of the Tokaido prints, his continuing energy, changes made to the designs between editions, and the later vertical-format works. Early twentieth-century exhibition catalogue by curators; admiring and now dated, and it says the date of the journey is not known.
- Yone Noguchi, 'Hiroshige' (1921, Cornell University Library copy via the Internet Archive), read in the sections on his place in ukiyo-e, the Tokaido and Kiso series and his relation to Hokusai (about one third of the 48,000-character text; the plate lists were not read): states the Tokaido series drew on sketches made on the journey, reports Usui Kojima's view that the Kiso series challenged Hokusai, and says Hiroshige reportedly judged other pictures by whether they showed Hokusai's influence. Interpretive essay by a Japanese poet-critic, now dated; he doubts the authenticity of Hiroshige's popular farewell verse and calls the artist partly 'a discovery or creation of the westerners'.
- The Metropolitan Museum of Art Open Access record JP2832 (object 53719), 'Memorial Portrait of Ichiryusai Hiroshige (1797-1858)', woodblock print by Utagawa Kunisada, Henry L. Phillips Collection, Bequest of Henry L. Phillips, 1939, flagged as public domain in the Met's API, checked for the portrait only; not used for any scoring.