Utagawa Hiroshige 歌川広重

Compositionally, Hiroshige drew from traditions of Mountain and Water ink painting to create these landscapes using expressive brushstrokes and blank space. The woodblock cutter and printer then skillfully reproduced Hiroshige’s brush compositions, inking the background in black and leaving the landscape outlines in white. The resulting effect is similar to a stone rubbing, another historically revered East Asian art form that was mainly appreciated and collected by elite classes. By fusing ink painting and stone rubbing, these prints highlighted centuries of cultural and artistic exchange between China and Japan. They also made these traditions accessible to new and wider audiences.