Fantastic Landscapes: Hokusai and Hiroshige

Jul 17–Oct 11, 2021

Exhibition

Gallery 107
Closed

Gallery 107
Closed

In the 19th century, Japanese printmaking saw two concurrent trends: an intensification of color and a rise in the popularity of landscape images.

Capitalizing on these two trends were the most successful print designers of their time, Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849) and Utagawa Hiroshige (1797–1858). Their daring color schemes formed fantastic landscapes that fueled worldwide demand for Japanese prints.

Print showing a string of travelers with horses walking along a narrow hillside path beneath an enormous craggy beige mountain at left and an equally massive and craggy deep-blue mountain at right. A brown snow-covered peak appears between these mountains. A mass of cream-colored clouds and a river with rounded ripples fill the middle plane of the composition. — *The Back of Mount Fuji Seen from Minobu River (Minobugawa Urafuji)*, from the series *Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji (Fugaku sanjūrokkei)*, about 1830/33

Katsushika Hokusai. Clarence Buckingham Collection

Beginning with the widespread use of the chemical pigment Berlin blue in the 1830s, landscapes could be as vibrant as one’s imagination. Brilliant blue waterfalls, jade hills, chartreuse cliffs, and pink skies made up a new palette for the natural world as depicted in print. The popularity of series such as Hokusai’s Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji and Hiroshige’s One Hundred Views of Edo did more to spread these images at home, in Europe, and in America than ever before.

As 03576 Int Press — *Yamashiro Province: The Togetsu Bridge in Mount Arashi (Yamashiro, Arashiyama Togetsukyo)*, from the series *Famous Places in the Sixty-Odd Provinces (Rokujuyoshu meisho zue)*, 1853

Utagawa Hiroshige. Clarence Buckingham Collection

This exhibition of works drawn from the Art Institute’s collection showcases a spectacular moment of color in Japanese landscapes—one that would have a lasting impact on artists oceans away.