Notebook - One hundred views of Edo

Hundred Views of Edo, the ultimate masterpiece by Hiroshige (1797-1858) composed in the last two years of his life, brings together 119 prints dedicated to his native Edo, which became Tokyo in 1868. Part of the meisho-e ("famous view paintings") genre celebrating Japanese landscapes, it illustrates the maturity of Hiroshige's art, where abstraction and composition take on greater importance. Wishing to "paint landscapes that the observer can see with his own eyes" (Souvenirs illustrés d'Edo), Hiroshige used the vertical format and composed images whose topographical precision fades somewhat under the unusual framing, dramatic enlargements and vivid colors. For this purpose, he used the nishiki-e technique, or "brocade print", which required several engraved woodblocks and enabled the use of many different colors and detailed rendering. These large-format prints (oban), grouped according to the seasons of the year, adopt the point of view of the human being contemplating the landscape, allowing emotion to emerge.