Artist Utagawa Hiroshige (Japanese, 1797–1858) was born, lived, and died in Edo (renamed Tokyo in 1868.) Edo became Japan’s de facto political capital in 1603 and by the eighteenth century was the world’s largest city, with a population exceeding one million. A newly prosperous middle class developed a love for richly colored woodblock prints depicting landscapes, birds and flowers, and other scenes of daily life during this period.
Hiroshige’s extraordinary woodblock-print series One Hundred Famous Views of Edo ranks among the greatest achievements of Japanese art. The 118 woodblock landscape and life scenes of mid-nineteenth-century Tokyo, issued between 1856 and 1858, remain a precious record of the spirit and appearance of Edo, at the culmination of more than two centuries of prosperity and peace.
The Brooklyn Museum holds an outstanding collection of prints from One Hundred Famous Views of Edo. The four prints reproduced in this notecard assortment highlight the delicate cherry blossoms of Edo.
This notecard collection contains five each of the following four images:
Suwa Bluff, Nippori, 5/1856
Dam on the Otonashi River at Ōji, 2/1857
New Fuji, Meguro, 4/1857
Blossoms on the Tama River Embankment, 2/1856
Contains 20 blank notecards (5 each of 4 images) and 20 envelopes.
Comes in a sturdy, reuseable box, great for storage of special little treasures.
Card Dimensions: 5 x 7 inches
