Kuganoskue

Biography:

Utagawa Hiroshige (1797-1858)

Hiroshige was born in Edo, his father held an official position in the firs brigade of the Edo Castle. He was drawing from an early age so his father arranged lessons for him from a fellow fireman, an amateur painter named Okajima Rinsai. In 1811 at the gae of fiteen, after the deathe of both his mother and father, he also tried to become a pupil of Toyokuni. Toyokuni’s studio was unable to accomodate another student so he became a student of Toyohiro of the same school. It is said that he made such quick progress in this studio that within a year Toyohiro introduced him as a member of the Utagawa School, and giving him the artist name Utagawa Hiroshige. Until 1830 he worked in the tradition of the Utagawa School, designing mainly bijin-ga (beautiful women), yakusha-e (actors) and musha-e (warrior) prints.

In the 1830’s Hiroshige embarked in a different direction in his work. Probably inspired by Hokusia’s Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, he produced a number of landscape views which were immediately popular and established  Hiroshige’s enduring fame as a landscape artist.