inheriting the wind, and the water...

hiroshige was a fireman. his family was too poor for him to try to make it on his own as an artist.


but he had had the artist's spirit since he was a child, and spent many years working, travelling, and being inspired by hokusai, slightly his predecessor.

the patience paid off because when he made it big, he made it with images from his travels; drawn from life, they were of great interest to a populace that was developing into a 'middle class,' one that travelled itself.

as we have discussed, while his work still appears to us as purely japanese, western artistic characteristics (shadows, reflections, and perspective) had begun to make an appearance in his work, along with great gradations of color--a result of

both his acquaintance with western art, and his involvement with a printing industry that was improving rapidly.

when we see the work of the yoshidas, of kawase hasui, of fletcher, phillips, riviere or any of the rest of the direct descendants of hiroshige's experimentation we have mentioned here, we can remember hiroshige's death poem:

i don't want to set
the world on fire.
i just want to start
a flame in your heart.1

(oh please please forgive me. the real one is here.)