Utagawa Hiroshige

Utagawa Hiroshige was a Japanese ukiyo-e printmaker whose landscape series, most famously The Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido and One Hundred Famous Views of Edo, established landscape as a major subject within the ukiyo-e woodblock print tradition. His prints combine carefully observed topographic detail with atmospheric effects of weather, season, and light, often organized through bold, asymmetrical compositions and unusual vantage points. Hiroshige's landscapes were exported to Europe in large numbers in the second half of the nineteenth century and had a direct, well-documented influence on Impressionist and Post-Impressionist painters, including Vincent van Gogh, who copied several of his compositions.