The British Museum gave Hiroshige its first exhibition on him, the first in London for over twenty-five years, from his Edo landscapes to Van Gogh and Julian Opie.
The British Museum in Bloomsbury held its first exhibition on Utagawa Hiroshige from Thursday 1 May to Sunday 7 September 2025. He made the print series One Hundred Famous Views of Edo.
Hiroshige was born in Edo, now Tokyo, in 1797, to a fire warden of samurai descent, and died in 1858. Unlike most print designers of his day he came from the warrior class, yet he devoted himself to popular customs.
He became one of Japan’s most prolific and popular artists as the country confronted the outside world. The Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō is among his best-known series, and he also designed hundreds of hand-held fans.
The show, the first on him in London for more than a quarter of a century, filled the Joseph Hotung Great Court Gallery. It drew on the museum’s prints, drawings, illustrated books and paintings, with a gift and loan of prints from the American collector Alan Medaugh.
It moved from bird-and-flower prints to views shaped by a growing appetite for travel. It also traced his legacy, from Vincent van Gogh, who copied his prints, to the contemporary artist Julian Opie.