By Utagawa Hiroshige (1797-1858), signed Hiroshige ga
Japan, 1833-34, Edo period (1615-1868)

Color woodblock print on paper. Horizontal Oban. From the series Tōkaidō gojūsan tsugi no uchi (The Fifty-Three Stations of the Tokaido), station 18: Okitsu, the Okitsu river (Okitsu, Okitsugawa). Publisher: Hōeidō | Senkakudō.

Condition: Good impression and fresh colors, little browning and very minor material loss along the margin. Mounted at the upper margin to a passepartout.
Provenance: Galerie Wansart, Brussels, February 15, 1949. Collection of Robert and Isabelle de Strycker, acquired from the above, and thence by descent in the same family. Robert de Strycker (1903-1968) was a French engineer who specialized in metallurgy. He was a Stanford graduate, a professor at the University of Leuven, a director of the Institute of Metallurgy at the Universite Catholique de Louvain, and one of the most influential members of the faculty of applied sciences. After World War II, he made large contributions to France's post-war recovery. Robert and his wife Isabelle (1915-2010) first encountered Asian art at the British Museum during a stay in London in the 1930s. Enamored with the style and beauty, they both decided to study and collect Japanese and Chinese works of art. In 1938, they eventually began to build their collection, buying from Belgian, Parisian, and English dealers. They kept close contact with the famous English collector Sir Harry Garner (1891-1977) and noted Czech collector and expert Fritz Low-Beer (1906-1976).

Dimensions: Image size 22 x 34.5 cm

Literature comparison: A near identical print is in the collection of the RISD Museum, USA, object number 20.1265.

Utagawa Hiroshige (1797 - 1858), also referred to as Ando Hiroshige, is recognized as one of the last great masters of the ukiyo-e (“pictures of the floating world”) woodblock printing tradition. His style can be characterized in the genre of landscape print, innovated by his early contemporary Hokusai (1760-1849). Hiroshige can be attributed to having created over 5,000 prints of everyday life and landscape in Edo-period Japan. Inspired by Katsushika Hokusai's popular Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji, Hiroshige took a softer, less formal approach with his Fifty-Three Stations of the Tokaido (1833-34), completed after a trip he made between Edo and Kyoto, which is acclaimed to be perhaps his finest achievement.