Edo - Images of a city between visual poetry and idealized reality
By Melanie Trede. Excerpt from the book 'Hiroshige. One Hundred Famous Views of Edo'
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A compositional, seasonal or color role was often played by vegetation, in particular trees, which sometimes bear names. The blossoming cherry trees we see on 15 prints express more than just a season, however. The reference was to an Edo blossoming once more following the catastrophic earthquake of 1855. Less frequently, certain areas are symbolized by animals, while birds are often used to enliven broad areas of sky and lend depth to them. Almost all the prints are characterized by clear weather, a red horizon hinting at sunrise or sunset. Only three rainy scenes and seven snowscapes interrupt the run of good weather. This picture-postcard atmosphere can be understood as a commercial strategy.
Strict edicts forbade the depiction of Edo Castle or any of the other buildings or installations of the shogun. It is true that places occupied by the military regime were sometimes concealed from the censors by being given an innocuous title, or else the castle appears in the background, or its outer ramparts and moats are integrated into the composition. Yet there remains a huge void in the center of Edo: 2.4 square kilometers (less than one square mile) are largely hidden from the eyes of the viewer.
Pictorial Innovations
The choice of the o - ban format, i.e. a vertical format, in the present series measuring 36.5-37.7 cm (approx. 14.3-14.8 in.) by 24.9-26.4 cm (approx. 9.8-10.4 in.) for the One Hundred Famous Views of Edo was novel for landscape prints. By using the vertical format, Hiroshige was also harking back to the tradition of vertical hanging scrolls often employed for landscape paintings.
With their fine color gradations and other special printing techniques, these woodblock prints resemble painted pictures. The use of the vigorous and contrasting colors blue, red and green, and sometimes also yellow, but often also subtly composed related hues, such as the blue-toblack shadings in Fireworks by Ryo - goku Bridge was by the mid-19th century part of the repertoire of ukiyo-e printmakers. At the same time, they reveal Hiroshige's familiarity with the established painting schools of his age. The eclecticism of Japanese painting at this time is also reflected in the principles of picture composition we see in the One Hundred Famous Views of Edo. Three important techniques of pictorial composition go back to different sources. In numerous prints, Hiroshige chooses the bird'seye view anchored in the Japanese painting tradition. But while our gaze falls on to a landscape from above, at the same time the overlayering of pictorial planes generates space and depth. Typical in the use of this technique are, for example, the prints Moto-Hachiman Shrine in Sunamura and Senju Great Bridge. There is no fixed point to define a picture's center; we are encouraged instead to let our gaze wander.
Another technique is Western linear perspective. Its optical realism had made it a widespread feature in the popular medium of the woodblock print since the mid-18th century, and Hiroshige used it for prominent street scenes, among other things. One or two house fronts run from the sides of the picture at an acute angle towards an often undepicted vanishing point. Sometimes he combines this relatively schematic grid with the bird's-eye view. In the view of Suruga-cho- , for example, we look down on the street in which people are going about their business; those in the middle distance are reduced to schematic figures of men and women. In the distance, precisely above the imaginary vanishing point, Mount Fuji rises majestically from a broad band of cloud.
Page [1] [2] [3] [4]
Page [1] [2] [3] [4]
A compositional, seasonal or color role was often played by vegetation, in particular trees, which sometimes bear names. The blossoming cherry trees we see on 15 prints express more than just a season, however. The reference was to an Edo blossoming once more following the catastrophic earthquake of 1855. Less frequently, certain areas are symbolized by animals, while birds are often used to enliven broad areas of sky and lend depth to them. Almost all the prints are characterized by clear weather, a red horizon hinting at sunrise or sunset. Only three rainy scenes and seven snowscapes interrupt the run of good weather. This picture-postcard atmosphere can be understood as a commercial strategy.
Strict edicts forbade the depiction of Edo Castle or any of the other buildings or installations of the shogun. It is true that places occupied by the military regime were sometimes concealed from the censors by being given an innocuous title, or else the castle appears in the background, or its outer ramparts and moats are integrated into the composition. Yet there remains a huge void in the center of Edo: 2.4 square kilometers (less than one square mile) are largely hidden from the eyes of the viewer.
Pictorial Innovations
The choice of the o - ban format, i.e. a vertical format, in the present series measuring 36.5-37.7 cm (approx. 14.3-14.8 in.) by 24.9-26.4 cm (approx. 9.8-10.4 in.) for the One Hundred Famous Views of Edo was novel for landscape prints. By using the vertical format, Hiroshige was also harking back to the tradition of vertical hanging scrolls often employed for landscape paintings.
With their fine color gradations and other special printing techniques, these woodblock prints resemble painted pictures. The use of the vigorous and contrasting colors blue, red and green, and sometimes also yellow, but often also subtly composed related hues, such as the blue-toblack shadings in Fireworks by Ryo - goku Bridge was by the mid-19th century part of the repertoire of ukiyo-e printmakers. At the same time, they reveal Hiroshige's familiarity with the established painting schools of his age. The eclecticism of Japanese painting at this time is also reflected in the principles of picture composition we see in the One Hundred Famous Views of Edo. Three important techniques of pictorial composition go back to different sources. In numerous prints, Hiroshige chooses the bird'seye view anchored in the Japanese painting tradition. But while our gaze falls on to a landscape from above, at the same time the overlayering of pictorial planes generates space and depth. Typical in the use of this technique are, for example, the prints Moto-Hachiman Shrine in Sunamura and Senju Great Bridge. There is no fixed point to define a picture's center; we are encouraged instead to let our gaze wander.
Another technique is Western linear perspective. Its optical realism had made it a widespread feature in the popular medium of the woodblock print since the mid-18th century, and Hiroshige used it for prominent street scenes, among other things. One or two house fronts run from the sides of the picture at an acute angle towards an often undepicted vanishing point. Sometimes he combines this relatively schematic grid with the bird's-eye view. In the view of Suruga-cho- , for example, we look down on the street in which people are going about their business; those in the middle distance are reduced to schematic figures of men and women. In the distance, precisely above the imaginary vanishing point, Mount Fuji rises majestically from a broad band of cloud.
Page [1] [2] [3] [4]
Hiroshige. One Hundred Famous Views of Edo
Japanese binding + bookcase, 34 x 42.5 cm (13.4 x 16.7 in.), 294 pages
$ 150.00
$ 150.00
Hiroshige's Edo: Masterful ukiyo-e woodblock prints of Tokyo in the mid-19th century
The Dyers' Quarter in Kanda (detail), 11-1857
Atagoshita and Yabu Lane, 12-1857