Hiroshige´s Japan: Views of Mount Fuji - Ashmolean Museum

Hiroshige's Japan: Views of Mount Fuji was a special exhibition held in the Ashmolean's Eastern Art Prints and Paintings Gallery (Gallery 29), presenting a selection of Hiroshige's views of the mountain drawn entirely from the museum's own collection. It was the second in a series of displays highlighting the Ashmolean's holdings of Hiroshige landscape prints, featuring views from several different series — some devoted entirely to Fuji and others in which the mountain appears in views of Edo or as seen from the Tōkaidō Road. The exhibition included 13 vertical format prints from Hiroshige's Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji (1858), three landscape format prints from Famous Views of the Eastern Capital (1832–1838), and five small-format views from the Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō (1840–42) series, each inscribed with a comic poem known as kyōka. Hiroshige's Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji was his final series, produced in conjunction with — and likely finished by — Utagawa Hiroshige II, for the publisher Tsutaya around 1858–59. While not considered among his finest series, it contains many striking prints that are rarely illustrated or exhibited. One reason for their rarity on display is purely practical: the pigments used in these woodblock prints are exceedingly sensitive and are damaged by all light — not just ultraviolet — making the cumulative effect of exposure a serious conservation concern, so they are shown only infrequently and under low light conditions. A particularly notable print in the collection is The Sea at Satta in Suruga Province, in which Mount Fuji is framed by a giant curling wave — a design echoing Hokusai's famous "Great Wave," though rendered by Hiroshige in a calmer and more detached manner, with three different shades of blue printed with great sophistication.