Synopses & Reviews
Hiroshige's One Hundred Famous Views of Edo, actually composed of 118 splendid woodblock landscape and genre scenes of midnineteenth century Tokyo, is one of the greatest achievements of Japanese art. The serees, reproduced from an exceptionally fine, first-edition set in the Brooklyn Museum of Art, contains many of Hiroshige's best-loved and most extraordinary prints. Each plate is accompanied by a commentary that discusses its artistic and cultural interest in detail. A celebration of the style and world of Japan's finest cultural flowering at the end of the shogunate.
Review
"Henry Smith skillfully and sensitively describes the images... and offers rewarding insights on the interchange between the larger tradition of the Japanese woodblock and Hiroshige's singular creative talent." Art in America
Review
"Besides being the catalog of a marvelous exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, Hiroshige: One Hundred Famous Views of Edo is the definitive study of the last series of landscapes produced by the Japanese woodblock-print artist Ando Hiroshige (1797-1858). These designs of Edo, or modern Tokyo, are among the most familiar images of Japanese art in the world: copies were printed by the thousands until the wooden blocks wore out. The Brooklyn Museum's set is of the highest quality, early impressions with extraordinarily skillful and subtle use of printing techniques, especially color gradation. Each of the designs, which ultimately numbered 118, is shown in the book full-size with a long caption on the facing page. The author's descriptions, impeccably researched, take us on a guided tour of the old city. Many of the locations are shown at festival time and demonstrate the richness of daily life and customs in premodern Japan.
A notable feature of the series is its use of what we would now call cinematic effects: abrupt framing that cuts a figure in half, or extreme juxtapositions of near and distant elements. Examples include an "aerial" view of the environs of Edo dominated by a close-up image of an eagle, and a study of the Horikiri iris gardens in which sightseers are seen through stalks that seem only inches away. Such imaginative and daring effects must have startled contemporaries. "Sudden Shower at Ohashi Bridge" uses slashing lines to indicate rain--it was copied in oils by van Gogh, who, like several other impressionist painters including Monet, was the proud owner of many Japanese prints. Hiroshige is a beautifully produced book; with individual designs of the series costing tens of thousands of dollars; owning a copy is a consolation for not owning the prints themselves." John Stevenson