Hiroshige's sketchbooks

Recently wonder | wander | women saw the British Museum's exhibition of Utagawa Hiroshige, and were so impressed by his virtuosity and artistic sense that one post was not enough to talk about this wandering artist.

Evening Cool at Ryōgoku, 1847-8

We are familiar with Hiroshige's finished works: his delicate use of colour and gradation, his bold compositions and immersive landscapes. He created a world that we love to wander through, even hundreds of years later. 

Arashiyama, c.1834

Behind this enchanting world lies the true magic: Hiroshige's mastery of drawing. He travelled extensively and drew as he went, using his uncanny observation and years of experience. 

Crane, tit, oriole, 1830s-40s

In the stylised world of ukiyo-e prints where drawing was often more intuitive or symbolic, Hiroshige, like his fellow artist Hokusai, drew realistically and from life, studying birds, foliage and seasonal flowers to capture them beautifully and accurately on paper.

Detail of oriole, 1830s-40s

In particular Hiroshige was famous for his ability to produce landscape paintings on the spot, when even the most skilled masters would usually do a quick sketch and then complete the piece in their studio. His sketchbooks, taken on the road, show his skill in creating finished work from spontaneous observation.

He even seemed to have made his skill for spontaneous painting into a form of entertainment. In the scroll below, Hiroshige depicted visitors to the Yoshiwara pleasure district passing though a boatyard at the foot of Mount Matsuchi and wrote "done on the spot" next to his signature. According to the text guide, Hiroshige would often start at the bottom of the painting, only revealing his subject at the end.

 

View of Mt Matsuchi and Imado Bridge,
late 1840s-50s

Still, there were times when this phenomenal master created hastier and more relatable sketches, familiar to any artists who keep a daily sketchbook. This page of a woman grilling mussels, opposite a stunning drawing of a mountain waterfall, seems like it could have been doodled yesterday.

In the end, Hiroshige was not only a legendary painter and printmaker but an earnest traveller dedicated to capturing his beautiful country as faithfully and yet gracefully as he could. Even the poem he wrote on his deathbed was a piece of art befitting his visionary life:

I entrust my brush

to that highway heading east, 

and seek journey's end 

in the celebrated sights

of a pure land in the west.