Asukayama Hanami (Cherry Blossom Viewing at Asukayama). From the series Kōto meishō (Famous views of the eastern capital).

Utagawa (Andō) Hiroshige (1797-1858), was a renowned painter and print artist, which old-time authorities still hail as the last of the great Japanese print masters, surely short-changing his brilliant contemporaries Kuniyoshi and Kunisada, not to mention later artists, notably Yoshitoshi. A son of an official in the fire department, he was a pupil of Utagawa Toyohiro and also studied with Okajima Rinsai and Ooka Umpo. In the 1820s he was active in many areas: actor prints, warrior prints, prints of women, and more. He started producing landscape prints in the early 1830s, establishing his own unique style with the series Famous Places in Edo and Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido Highway of 1832-3, several prints of which are in Te Papa's collection. He continued to excel at views of famous places throughout his career and managed to express in great detail the poetic sensibility inherent in the climate and topography of Japan and the people who lived there. Hiroshige also designed many masterpieces in the genre of bird and flower prints, once again creating a world where poetry and painting combined.

This print comes from the series Famous Places in Edo (sometimes rendered as Famous Views of the Eastern Capital [Edo]), and probably dates from c. 1832-34. The theme is a classic one in Japanese art - and life - a massive excursion to admire the sakura (cherry blossom) with two foregound figures on horseback leading the crowd of blossom-viewers. The location is Asukayama, which was made into a Tokyo public park in 1873, fifteen years after Hiroshige's death. It is characterised by his knowing but somewhat abrupt style which gave his prints such appeal to early modernists, and contrasts markedly with the more overtly gorgeous works of his contemporary Kunisada (Toyokuni III). It is not to be confused with the more famous series dating from the end of Hiroshige's life, One Hundred Famous Views of Edo, where the prints are vertical, not horizontal as here.

Sources:

Boston Museum of Fine Arts, https://www.mfa.org/collections/object/cherry-blossom-viewing-at-asuka-hill-asukayama-hanami-from-the-series-famous-places-in-edo-k%C3%B4to -meisho-176259

British Museum, 'Utagawa Hiroshige (Biographical details), https://www.britishmuseum.org/research/search_the_collection_database/term_details.aspx?bioId=147828

Dr Mark Stocker  Curator, Historical International Art   May 2019