The once and future master

With his quiet landscape prints, Utagawa Hiroshige brought beauty into the everyday life of 19th-century Japan, but his influence also reached across time and space to inspire Vincent van Gogh, James McNeill Whistler and many contemporary artists

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HIROSHIGE is not of the past.' Alfred Haft, lead curator of the British Museum's forthcoming exhibition on the Japanese ukiyo-e artist, makes a bold assertion, considering that Hiroshige (1797–1858) was born when George III reigned over England, died when Victoria had been on the throne for a mere 21 years and—unlike his near-contemporary Katsushika Hokusai, king of The Great Wave—has been relatively neglected in contemporary Britain. 'Hiroshige: artist of the open road' is not only the first exhibition on the ukiyo-e master ever held at the British Museum, but also the first of its kind and scale held in a public venue in London for the past 25 years.

Yet, Dr Haft is right: Hiroshige was and remains an incredibly important artist. Born (as Andô Tokutarô) in the low ranks of the samurai, one-time warriors turned into the administrative elite of the ruling Togukawa shogunate, 'he grew up as a successor to a position in the Shogun's fire department, so he lived in a barracks'. From a very early age, however, he showed a facility for drawing that eventually led him to join the studio of a very popular artist of the Floating World, Utagawa Toyohiro.

The ukiyo, or Floating World, was the realm of kabuki theatre, courtesans, pleasure houses and the people who depicted them, but Toyohiro was different from other artists: 'He had quieter style, so there was a sympathy of temperaments, perhaps between Hiroshige and [him].' This doesn't mean that Hiroshige left his samurai upbringing entirely behind. 'He was commissioned in about 1849–51 to produce perhaps 200 hanging scrolls for a high-ranking samurai domain in northern Japan, so he had strong connections with [that] community, and enjoyed sword demonstrations. He always thought of himself, in a way, as a samurai, but he didn't take it too seriously.' He even requested a samurai funeral in his will, although he then changed his mind.