Japan in Rome with Hiroshige “Master of Nature” Show opening March 17

For the first time in Italy, the exhibition will be presenting 200 works by Utagawa Hiroshige
(1797-1858), one of the greatest Japanese artists of all time, who significantly influenced
painting in Europe, particularly Impressionism and Neo-Impressionism. Imitated by
numerous 19th century artists, his most famous emulator was Vincent Van Gogh, who was
deeply inspired by his technique and subject matter, and faithfully reproduced a number of
his works in some very famous paintings.

Hosted by the Fondazione Roma and produced in collaboration with Arthemisia, the
exhibition is curated by Gian Carlo Calza, with technical coordination by The International
Hokusai Research Centre. It represents a unique opportunity to get to know an artist
whose outstanding talent for contemplating and conveying a harmonious vision of nature,
even in the midst of a blizzard, or at the centre of a whirlpool, still channels an intense
capacity for religious absorption, bringing human sentiments in tune with the pulse of the
cosmos, connecting the infinitely small with the boundlessly immense.

Divided into five sections, the exhibition “Hiroshige. Master of Nature”, staged by the
Fondazione Roma Museo, presents works from the Honolulu Academy of Arts, which
possesses probably the largest collection of prints by Hiroshige in the West, boasting over
3,000 images, mostly from the legacy of James Michener, the famous novelist who wrote
Sayonara and Hawaii. The exhibition also features photos from the JCII Foundation in
Tokyo, Japan’s most important museum of photographic apparatus, and one of the
country’s chief photography museums.
The first section, “The World of Nature”, contains prints which are masterpieces in the
representation of natural elements: a flock of wild geese in flight against the background of
a full moon, or a small shoal of salmonids, ayu, swimming against the current in a stream of
white and sky blue, or a waterfall gushing over a rock jutting out above a deep chasm, with
an autumn red maple. The second section, “Postcards from the Provinces”, features
works depicting Japanese beauty spots famed for striking natural elements (a breathtaking
waterfall, unusually-shaped rocks, a twisted tree on a cliff top) or spectacular views (deep
sea gorges, a fragile bridge suspended above a precipice), their mythological or literary
connotations, or as popular meeting places. The third section, entitled “The Road to
Kyoto”, is dedicated to the two great thoroughfares that connected the imperial capital of
Kyoto to the administrative capital of Edo (Tokyo), one along the coast (T_kaid_), and one
inland (Kisokaid_). This section contains the work The Fifty-Three Stations of the T_kaid_,
universally considered to be the artist’s absolute masterpiece. He created this work around
1834, shortly after a trip there. The fourth section, “In the Heart of Tokyo”, features
views of Edo, the so-called “Western capital” of Japan – now Tokyo – which was home to
the shogun, the military and political head of Japan. Hiroshige depicted over a hundred
popular spots in the city, from the “nightless city” of Yoshiwara, with its elegant bordellos, to
theatreland in the Saruwach_ district, and Nihonbashi, the point from which Japanese
people measure all distances and journeys.

There is a separate section entitled “Hiroshige’s Landscapes in Early Photography”,
curated by Rossella Menegazzo, which presents photographs and postcards of landscapes
and famous places that bear witness to the influence Hiroshige had on the new medium
and the vision of the first photographers: the visual angle of the shots, the choice of places
made famous by the artist’s prints, and his “take” on nature, all live on in the new images.
This creates an impression of almost natural continuity between the painterly ukiyo-e
tradition, and the modern technology of photography.