User:JMiall/Plum Park in Kameido

Plum Park in Kameido (亀戸梅屋舗, Kameido Umeyashiki) is a woodblock print in the ukiyo-e genre by the Japanese artist Andō Hiroshige. Hiroshige is regarded alongside Hokusai as one of the masters of the genre and this is perhaps the most famous print outside Japan, from what is possibly his greatest series of woodcuts.

One Hundred Famous Views of Edo
The picture is part of the series One Hundred Famous Views of Edo which actually features 119 views of 'named places' or 'celebrated spots' in the area that is today Tokyo. The series was unique in being the first to feature this many separate landscape views.

The series was produced between 1856 and 1859 with Hiroshige II finishing the series after the death of Hiroshige in 1858. This print is the 30th in the series, within its spring section, and was published in the eleventh month of 1857. The series was commissioned shortly after the 1855 Edo earthquake and subsequent fires and featured many of the newly rebuilt or repaired buildings. The prints may have commemorated or helped draw Edo's citizens attention to the progress of the rebuilding. The print, as with the entire series, uses the unconventional portrait orientation for an image of a landscape, which was a break from ukiyo-e tradition and proved popular with his audience.

Description
The print shows part of the most famous tree in Edo, the "Sleeping Dragon Plum" (Garyubai), which had blossoms "so white when full in bloom as to drive off the darkness" and branches that travelled looping across the ground like a dragon to emerge as further trunks over an area of 50 feet square. The tree is shown with a unique abstract composition, with wide branches taking up much of the foreground but cropped by the frame of the picture giving a resemblance to Japanese calligraphy. Visible between the branches of the Sleeping Dragon Plum are further trees and small figures behind a low fence contemplating the plum blossom. A sign, possibly forbidding vandalism, is in the foreground at the top left of the image. The image uses Hiroshige's exaggerated single-point perspective whereby the closest objects in view are increased in size and the use of the unnatural red sky has the effect of flattening the visible space.

Influence
Hiroshige's most popular prints were produced in the tens of thousands at a low individual cost and due to the opening up of Japan after 1853 were popular both in Japan and Europe where they had a huge influence on the future Impressionist artists.

Vincent Van Gogh was a major collector of Japanese prints, decorating his studio with them. He was heavily influenced by these prints, particularly Hiroshige, and made copies of two of the One Hundred Famous Views of Edo, Sudden Shower over Shin-Ōhashi bridge and Atake and this print in 1877. He made these copies in order to try out for himself elements he admired such as the cropped composition, decorative use of colour, large blocks of colour with strong outlines, flat brushstrokes, and diagonal elements. Van Gogh ignored the shading present in the trunk and background of Hiroshige's image, which there implied age, and instead used colours with more "passion" and "youthfulness".