Utagawa Hiroshige II (1826–1869)

Condition Report

Impression & Colours

Strong. A good, well-registered impression with crisp keyblock lines in the wave patterns, pine foliage, boats and figures. The colours are well saturated: the deep indigo bokashi at the top of the sky and in the surf along the shore is dense and even, the pale blue of the open water grades smoothly into the white of the bay, and the red sunset band on the horizon and the vermilion torii in the shallows are clear. Some minor fading.

Paper

Good overall. The paper remains firm and supple. There are repaired wormholes in the centre, and a thin central crease which does not affect the structure of the sheet. The right margin is slightly trimmed. Minor scuff on the verso. Some light soiling in the margins.

⚠ Please examine all photographs carefully — they form part of this condition report.

Two Torii and a Bay of Gradated Blue

Hiroshige II builds this view from a high vantage point, looking down over a thatched roof and three pines onto a broad beach where travellers walk along the shore. Beyond them the bay opens out towards pine-covered islands, fleets of sails and a line of dark mountains under a red evening sky. Sanuki Province is present-day Kagawa Prefecture on Shikoku, facing the Seto Inland Sea.

The composition is organised by colour. The printer's bokashi does the work of perspective: the sea is deep indigo where the waves break on the beach, lightens to pale blue across the middle distance, and turns almost white in the open bay, before the islands and the sunset close the view. Two torii mark a sacred route across the water. A vermilion gate stands in the surf close to shore, and further out, dark gates stand before a small shrine on the wooded island at left. It is a view about moving through the landscape — from beach, through water, to shrine — and the gradations of blue carry the eye along the same path.

The Series — Hiroshige II's Views of the Provinces

Shokoku meisho hyakkei was published between 1859 and 1861 by Uoya Eikichi — the same publisher who had issued Hiroshige I's celebrated One Hundred Famous Views of Edo. Production began only a few months after Hiroshige II took over his master's name, and Uoei gave it the same careful carving and printing. It is regarded as his most important series.

Following the model of his master's Famous Views of the Sixty-odd Provinces, the series set out to show one hundred views across Japan but was never completed. Counts vary between around 79 and 85 designs; this view of Kubotani was issued in the 11th month of 1859, among the earlier sheets of the series.

Utagawa Hiroshige II — The Pupil Who Carried the Name

Born Suzuki Chinpei in 1826, Hiroshige II trained under the great landscape master Utagawa Hiroshige under the name Shigenobu, and married his master's daughter. After Hiroshige I died in 1858, he inherited the name and continued the landscape tradition with the same publishers. In 1865 he left Edo for Yokohama and worked as Kisai Risshō until his death in 1869.

Of Hiroshige's few pupils he was the most successful, and his work is so close to his master's in style, subject and signature that the two were long confused — early Western scholars did not recognise him as a separate artist, and some collections still catalogue his prints under the name Hiroshige alone. At his best, as here, he shows his own gift for clear, airy space that opens from the foreground into the far distance.