Van Gogh’s love of Hiroshige, the Japanese master of the landscape, is reflected in a British Museum exhibition – The Art Newspaper

The British Museum’s exhibition on the Japanese grasp printmaker Utagawa Hiroshige (1797-1858) consists of Van Gogh’s personal copy of a print which he utilized in a portray in homage. Contemporary analysis reveals how he copied the Hiroshige.

Hiroshige: Artist of the Open Highway (till 7 September) showcases the work of one of many Nineteenth-century’s biggest Japanese artists, with over 100 prints (many from the American collector Alan Medaugh). Though Van Gogh performs a secondary function within the London exhibition, the British Museum has secured uncommon loans which emphasise how Japanese artwork impressed avant-garde European artists.

It was whereas Van Gogh was dwelling in Paris in 1886-88 that he found Japanese artwork, shopping for over 600 prints from the famous vendor Siegfried Bing. Most of those survive on the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, they usually embrace no fewer than 78 by Hiroshige.

Van Gogh’s tribute to Hiroshige is expressed most dramatically in two work that had been based mostly on the Japanese artist’s prints. The primary was impressed by Hiroshige’s The Plum Backyard at Kameido (1857), an early morning view of blossom in a district in Edo (now Tokyo).

Van Gogh’s copy of the print of The Plum Backyard at Kameido is on show within the British Museum exhibition, on mortgage from Amsterdam. The Dutch artist’s personal surviving copies of Japanese prints are solely very sometimes lent by the Van Gogh Museum, for conservation causes, and this specific one has been loaned solely as soon as, when it went to Hamburg in 2002. 

Van Gogh’s copy of Hiroshige’s print has way back light, however this displays the truth that in the course of the Dutchman’s time in Paris Japanese prints had been cheap and handled casually. Van Gogh paid a median of 15 centimes—the French foreign money of the time—per print, not way more than the worth of a espresso. Copies of The Plum Backyard at Kameido usually now promote for round £50,000.

Having acquired a replica of the print, Van Gogh made a tracing of the composition. He then rigorously squared it up, enlarging it barely for his portray. This tracing can also be on the British Museum.

Capucine Korenberg, a British Museum senior scientist, has simply made an necessary discovery. She seen a brief pencil line (5 centimetres lengthy) on the upper-right facet of the print, simply the place the background modifications from pink to cream. It hyperlinks up precisely with the reduce a part of Van Gogh’s tracing. This confirms that this instance of the print was utilized by the Dutch artist for the composition—as a information to position his tracing paper over the print.

Within the ensuing portray, Van Gogh diverged from Hiroshige’s composition by including two outstanding vertical strips of Japanese characters on the perimeters. These are based mostly on actual Japanese phrases, however taken from different prints and are unrelated to the backyard scene. Van Gogh presumably needed to stress that his portray was a Japanese-inspired work.

It ought to come as no shock that Van Gogh selected to depict a blossom scene, since they’re widespread in Japanese artwork and he himself cherished flowering timber in spring. Quickly after his transfer to Arles, in early 1888, he made greater than a dozen work of fruit blossom.

Van Gogh’s different portray immediately impressed by Japanese artwork was based mostly on Sudden Bathe over Ohashi and Atake (1857), one other Edo view. Hiroshige has depicted the riverscape from three viewpoints: trying down on the bridge, throughout to the other shore and as much as the darkish clouds.

The ensuing portray by Van Gogh, Bridge within the Rain (October-November 1887), additionally has a border with Japanese characters. This frame-like gadget, in pink and inexperienced, is in complementary colors which Van Gogh cherished to make use of. Sadly neither of the Van Gogh work based mostly on Hiroshige prints had been obtainable for the British Museum exhibition (they had been final lent outdoors Amsterdam round 35 years in the past).

The inspiration continued after Van Gogh left Paris. He was most likely pondering of Hiroshige’s streaks of falling water when be made one in every of his final work, Rain – Auvers (July 1890).

Hiroshige prints additionally characteristic in Van Gogh’s portraits of Père Julien Tanguy, a buddy in Paris who offered paint provides. All of the works within the background of the portray are Japanese photos. The blossom scene within the upper-right nook is Hiroshige’s Ishiyakushi: The Yoshitsune Cherry Tree close to the Noriyori Shrine (1855). The upper-centre picture of Mount Fuji is an amalgam of two Hiroshige prints: Yoshiwara: The Subject of Floating Islands within the Fuji Marsh (1855), with its flock of birds, and The Sagami River (1858). Van Gogh owned copies of all three prints. In a drawing of Tanguy (October-December 1887), the Mount Fuji scene seems within the background.

The British Museum exhibition consists of one in every of Van Gogh’s drawings from its personal assortment which was influenced by Japanese artwork, The Countryside seen from Montmajour (July 1888). Van Gogh wrote of this drawing: “It does NOT look Japanese, and it’s really essentially the most Japanese factor that I’ve executed.” 

Because the British Museum curator Alfred Haft explains, the drawing pulls the viewer by way of a “vary of viewpoints”, suggesting that “European perspective just isn’t the one method to endow a panorama image with a way of sweeping depth”.

Van Gogh was amongst many avant-garde artists to be impressed by Hiroshige within the late-Nineteenth century. Others included James Whistler, Auguste Rodin, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Edgar Degas, Henri Rivière, Théo van Rysselberghe and Arthur Dow. Claude Monet owned no fewer than 48 Hiroshige prints, together with Sudden Bathe over Ohashi and Atake.

Gauguin’s early masterpiece Imaginative and prescient of the Sermon (1888) was most likely influenced by the cropped tree in The Plum Backyard at Kameido. He might properly have seen Van Gogh’s copy of the Hiroshige—and the Dutchman’s portray in homage.

REVISED: Initially printed in April 2025, this weblog publish was up to date with new info on 1 August 2025.

Martin Bailey is a number one Van Gogh specialist and particular correspondent for The Artwork Newspaper. He has curated exhibitions on the Barbican Artwork Gallery, Compton Verney/Nationwide Gallery of Scotland and Tate Britain.

Martin has written various bestselling books on Van Gogh’s years in France: The Sunflowers Are Mine: The Story of Van Gogh’s Masterpiece (Frances Lincoln 2013, UK and US), Studio of the South: Van Gogh in Provence (Frances Lincoln 2016, UK and US), Starry Night time: Van Gogh on the Asylum (White Lion Publishing 2018, UK and US) and Van Gogh’s Finale: Auvers and the Artist’s Rise to Fame (Frances Lincoln 2021, UK and US). The Sunflowers are Mine (2024, UK and US) and Van Gogh’s Finale (2024, UK and US) are additionally now obtainable in a extra compact paperback format.

His different current books embrace Residing with Vincent van Gogh: The Properties & Landscapes that formed the Artist (White Lion Publishing 2019, UK and US), which gives an outline of the artist’s life. The Illustrated Provence Letters of Van Gogh has been reissued (Batsford 2021, UK and US). My Pal Van Gogh/Emile Bernard gives the primary English translation of Bernard’s writings on Van Gogh (David Zwirner Books 2023, UKand US).

To contact Martin Bailey, please electronic mail vangogh@theartnewspaper.com

Please observe that he doesn’t undertake authentications.

Discover all of Martin’s adventures with Van Gogh right here