Hiroshige : Artist of the Open Road

Sublime exhibition at the British Museum looking at the work of the 19th century Japanese print designers, Utagawa Hiroshige.

I love Japanese prints and these were some of the finest I'd seen. I'd done a lecture on it a few days before which proved helpful to have an outline of narrative for the show already. The labels were clear and simple and told you a lot more about the places you were looking at.

I would have liked to know a bit more about the block cutters and printers as they are as much a part of the magic as the designer. The example of a block they did has a very shallow cut and you can't image it producing such beautiful images. I think this may have been explained on videos but they were quite small and caused bottle necks.

I the inclusion of a section on designs for fans and it explained that these were very fashionable items which would have only been used for a season. I loved the variety of images for them and my favourite was this wonderful picture of sushi. I so hope it was given away at a restaurant.

Although there were some fantastic landscapes and pictures of birds and flowers, I think my favourites were the urban scenes which showed a very relatable life. I think this picture of rain over a bridge might be my favourite Japanese print and it was obviously liked by Van Gogh who copied it.

Closed 7 September 2025


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