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| Maple leaves at the Tekona shrine, Mamma |
London, British Museum (1906-12-20-652)
This print comes from Hiroshige's last great series, One hundred views of Edo. He died before it could be completed, and his son-in-law and successor, Hiroshige II, has his signature on three of the prints. Hiroshige experimented successfully in this series with the device of bringing part of the scenery well into the foreground. He has an eagle hovering over an aerial view of Fukagawa; lengths of dyed cloth wave in the wind to the right of a print of Kanda; Whistler took the idea for his Battersea Bridge from an under-bridge view of Tsukuda. Here, we are invited to look at the scenery through bright, red maple leaves, a photographic composition by an artist who had no knowledge of photography. This series came out four years after the arrival of the first Westerners in Japan, and was brought into Europe almost immediately. Whistler was not the only artist to be inspired by the prints; Vincent van Gogh faithfully copied two of them.
