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| Utagawa Hiroshige II (Andō Bunkō) | |
|---|---|
| Name | Utagawa Hiroshige II (Andō Bunkō) |
| Birth date | 1826 |
| Death date | 1869 |
| Nationality | Japanese |
| Occupation | Ukiyo-e artist |
| Movement | Utagawa school |
Utagawa Hiroshige II (Andō Bunkō) was a Japanese ukiyo-e artist active in the mid-19th century who succeeded the name and workshop of the famed landscape printmaker Utagawa Hiroshige. He trained within the Utagawa school and produced prints of landscapes, bijin-ga, and kabuki subjects, working with major Edo and Osaka publishers during the late Edo and early Meiji periods.
Andō Bunkō was born in Edo in 1826 into a cultural milieu shaped by figures such as Tokugawa Ieyasu, the legacy of the Edo period, and institutions like the Nihonbashi commercial district where ukiyo-e circulated. He apprenticed under artists of the Utagawa school, which traced its lineage to Utagawa Toyoharu and was associated with masters such as Utagawa Hiroshige (the first), Utagawa Kunisada, Utagawa Kuniyoshi, and Utagawa Hiroshige III. His early exposure included prints and printsellers connected to locations like Kyōbashi, Asakusa, and the theatrical quarters near Sukeroku-style kabuki houses frequented by patrons of Nakamura Kanzaburō and Ichikawa Danjūrō. Training practices mirrored those in workshops led by figures like Hiroshige I and Toyokuni I, emphasizing design, block carving coordination with carvers such as Kitagawa Utamaro's collaborators, and color application used by printers in publishers' shops on Edo's Sumida River trade routes.
Following the death of his master, the new head of the Utagawa workshop entered into formal adoption and name succession practices common to ukiyo-e lineages, similar to successions in the line of Toyokuni and the naming conventions used by Utagawa Kunisada. Bunkō took the art-name associated with his predecessor in an arrangement echoing adoptions recorded in the histories of studios connected to Edo bakufu cultural patronage and to patrons in Nakano and Shimbashi. The succession involved publishers and patrons such as those from shops on Nihonbashi and in Kanda, and paralleled other inheritances like that of Hiroshige III who likewise assumed a master’s mantle. This succession affected Bunkō’s commissions for series that engaged scenes familiar from earlier works by predecessors who depicted routes like the Tōkaidō and locales such as Hakone, Kanagawa, and Fujikawa.
Bunkō’s style combined the compositional traditions of the Utagawa lineage with motifs popularized by predecessors who produced series on the Tōkaidō, Nakasendō, and 53 Stations of the Tōkaidō. His prints included landscape views referencing sites like Edo landmarks, Mount Fuji, Kanazawa vistas, and Nihonbashi perspectives, as well as bijin-ga portraying courtesans of Yoshiwara and scenes from kabuki productions featuring actors from the Ichikawa and Nakamura lineages. Major series attributed to him include landscape and travel prints in the tradition of Hiroshige I’s famed series and collaborative works echoing the format of Hokusai’s views, while smaller albums and surimono reflected techniques used by poets and collectors in circles associated with Kobayashi Issa and Matsuo Bashō-inspired themes. His color palette and printing techniques aligned with innovations of the late Edo print trade led by publishers experimenting with aizuri-e, benizuri-e, and early nishiki-e approaches.
Bunkō worked with prominent publishers and print-sellers of Edo and Osaka, including houses modeled on those of Tsutaya Jūzaburō, Iseya Rihei, and Hōeidō-style firms, and with carvers and printers descended from workshops linked to Katsushika Hokusai and Utagawa Kuniyoshi. He produced works for stage-related series that involved collaborations with kabuki actor-name managers such as those tied to Ichimura Uzaemon and theaters like Morita-za and Ichimura-za. Publishers in Nihonbashi and Kanda coordinated with designs destined for distribution in Nagoya, Kyoto, and Osaka, connecting his output to merchant networks that included Mitsui-affiliated clients and shopfronts near Rokku entertainment districts.
Contemporaries and critics compared Bunkō’s output to that of highly esteemed artists including Utagawa Hiroshige (the first), Katsushika Hokusai, Utagawa Kuniyoshi, and Utagawa Kunisada, with assessments informed by the tastes of collectors in Edo and Kyoto and by literary figures such as Natsume Sōseki and later historians like Ernst Gombrich who evaluated ukiyo-e trajectories. His successors in the Utagawa line and artists working in the Meiji period drew on his repertoire for landscape motifs and publisher networks, affecting prints circulated in exhibitions and auctions associated with institutions like the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the British Museum, and the Tokyo National Museum.
Bunkō’s later career unfolded amid the political and social transformations surrounding the end of the Tokugawa shogunate and the onset of the Meiji Restoration, events contemporaneous with the careers of figures such as Saigō Takamori and Katsu Kaishū. He continued producing prints for Edo and Osaka markets until his death in 1869, a year that followed upheavals influencing cultural production and the print trade, and preceded broader modernization efforts promoted by Emperor Meiji.
Works by Bunkō are preserved in major public collections and private holdings influenced by collectors and institutions such as the British Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Victoria, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Tokyo National Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and university collections connected to Harvard Art Museums and Yale University Art Gallery. Scholarship on his role in the Utagawa lineage appears alongside studies of Hiroshige I, Hokusai, and Kuniyoshi in catalogues raisonnés, exhibition catalogues from institutions like the Art Institute of Chicago and the Victoria and Albert Museum, and auction records from houses dealing in Japanese prints active in London, Paris, and New York.
Category:Ukiyo-e artists Category:Japanese printmakers Category:19th-century Japanese artists