From 17 February until 5 May 2024, an exhibition “Tōkaidō Road” will be on view at the Art Museum RIGA BOURSE. Exhibition will showcase 10 landscapes from the Japanese artists Utagawa Hiroshige and Utagawa Hiroshige II.
Tōkaidō was the main road during the Edo period (1603–1868), which linked Kyoto and Edo. It went along the Eastern coast of Japan, and its scenic landscape influenced many artists.
The collection of the Latvian National Museum of Art (LNMA) has six ukiyo-e prints by Utagawa Hiroshige (歌川広重, 1797–1858) from various “53 Stations of Tōkaidō” series. This series made Hiroshige one of the best ukiyo-e landscape artists alongside his already well-known contemporary Katsushika Hokusai (葛飾北斎, 1760–1849).
The works arrived at the museum collection in 1956, having been purchased from the collection of Latvian sculptor Gustavs Šķilters (1874–1954). It is most likely that he acquired them in Paris (1900–1905), where he was studying at the workshop of Auguste Rodin.
Nowadays, Hiroshige is viewed as the last great master of the Japanese traditional ukiyo-e, and his art has influenced numerous European and American artists from the second half of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century.
