Ando Hiroshige
Japanese (1797 - 1858) Primary

Takao, from the series Ogura Imitations of One Hundred Poems by One Hundred Poets (Ogura nazorae hyakunin isshu)

c.1845-1848

15 3/4 x 10 1/2 (40.01 cm x 26.67 cm)

This object has the following keywords:

• Asian - Refers to the cultures of the continent of Asia, which is in the eastern hemisphere, and is bounded by the Pacific Ocean, the Indian Ocean, the Arctic Ocean, and is generally considered to be delimited on the west by the Ural Mountains. It also refers to the numerous islands off the coast of Asia.
• bijinga - Paintings or prints that depict beautiful women. This term, which literally means "pictures of beautiful women," was most likely coined in the Edo period (1615-1868) or the Meiji period (1868-1912). Before this period, these pictures may have been called "onna-e" or "bijin-e".
• color - Refers to pigment in a medium, such as ink, water, or oil. A common example is in referring to the media of Asian art (e.g., "ink and color on paper").
• color woodcuts - Woodcuts that incorporate color, usually through combining a series of blocks in precise registration that have been inked with individual hues and pressed onto one support.
• courtesans - Prostitutes who draw their clientele from a court or from the upper classes, and whose services often include social entertaining as well as sexual activity.
• inscriptions - Words, texts, lettering, or symbols marked on a work, including texts, legends, documentation notes, or commemoration. For standardized symbols or notations on objects that convey official information, use "marks (symbols)."
• Japanese - Nationality, periods, cultures, and styles found in Japan, either in historical times or in the present.
• poems - Written or oral compositions characterized by condensed language chosen for sound and suggestive power as well as meaning, and by the use of such literary techniques as structured meter, natural cadences, rhyme, or metaphor.
• poetry - Literary and oral genre rooted in the compressed and cogent imaginative awareness or associations of experiences, ideas, or emotional responses and arranged under an organized criterion of meaning, conscious and unconscious expression, symbolism, formal or informal pattern, sound, and rhythm. The genre encompasses narrative, dramatic, satiric, didactic, erotic, and personal forms.
• Ukiyo-e - Distinctive genre in painting and other media, but most prominently in woodblock printing. It arose in the Edo period (1600-1868) and built up a broad popular market among the middle classes. Subject matter typically focused on brothel districts and kabuki theatres, with formats ranging from single sheet prints to book illustrations. Generally, the style is characterized by a mixture of the realistic narrative of the Kamakura period and the mature decorative style of the Momoyama and Edo periods. Distinctive styles and specialties in subject matter were developed by different schools throughout the period.
• women - Refers to female human beings from young adulthood through old age.
• woodcuts - Prints made using the process of woodcut, which is a relief process in which the design is cut into and printed from the plank side of a wood block; distinct from "wood engraving (process)," which is a relief process using the grain end of a wood block.

This object is a member of the following portfolios: