The only thing wrong with the British Museum’s rapturous trip through the Technicolor world of Utagawa Hiroshige’s prints is its final section, which explores this early 19th-century Japanese artist’s continuing global influence. A patchy sampling of Hiroshige’s imitators is all a bit rushed. But then, to do justice to his after-echoes would take a blockbuster in itself, not an epilogue.
Everywhere I looked up to this point, it was evident how precisely French impressionism followed Hiroshige’s cues. Take rain. It becomes a pleasurable urban event in Renoir’s The Umbrellas, but it was Hiroshige who first saw rain as a lighthearted excuse to put up umbrellas – in works such as his print Tarui, created in the 1830s. The impressionist theme of snow, enjoyed by Monet, is also delightfully anticipated by Hiroshige’s 1832-34 work Snow-viewing Along the Sumida River.
