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Modern Life Modern Vision Artist: Utagawa HIROSHIGE Date Made:
1853 Lender: Trustees of The British Museum, London This picture
depicts a suburb of Edo – Japans’ capital, and now the site of
Tokyo. The suburb, Ochanomizu, is presented by Hiroshige, in mid
winter, in colours consisting mostly of greys and blues. The
areas of unprinted paper have been outlined in black and
softened with tones of grey to give depiction of snowdrifts and
snowflakes falling. Colour highlights draw our attention to the
two women in the foreground. In this print Hiroshige has
presented a partial view of a foreground object juxtaposed
against a distant background. This practice was a radical
departure from the traditional European approach to composition
and was used by Monet in images such as Garden of the Princess.
Click image to enlarge