10 exhibition highlights in plain English

Utagawa Hiroshige is a famous Japanese artist.

He was born a long time ago in a city called Edo.

People from all walks of life loved his pictures.

Artists around the world have also enjoyed his pictures and used them as a starting point for their own work.

1. Picture of Hiroshige by Kunisada

This picture of Hiroshige was made just after he died.

It shows that his friends saw him as a kind, friendly and religious man.

Hiroshige's parents died when he was 12.

His father had worked in the fire department.

A chief in the fire department taught Hiroshige to paint.

Hiroshige lived at a time when cities were growing in Japan.

But there was sometimes not a lot to eat and people were worried about foreign countries attacking them.

2. Picture of a mountain and river by Hiroshige

This is a view of the famous Japanese volcano Mount Fuji.

Hiroshige included it in many of his pictures.

He made the yellow sky and dark blue water in this picture with a method called bokashi in Japanese.

You can watch an artist showing how this was done in the film below.

3. Printer's pad

This is the type of pad the printer would have used to make the yellow sky and blue sea.

It is made of bamboo bark and paper.

Travel abroad had been forbidden for a long time in Japan.

But during Hiroshige's lifetime many people began to take trips inside the country.

Hiroshige went on drawing trips.

He made beautiful landscape pictures. They often include people going about their daily lives.

4. Picture of a sudden rain shower by Hiroshige

A shower surprises people walking along the highway.

The rain beats down on them and the bamboo trees.

Men and trees bend under the weight of the rain.

Hiroshige made beautiful pictures of nature.

These were often of birds and flowers.

A lot of people could read in Hiroshige's time and he liked to include poems in his pictures.

5. Picture of an owl and a flying bird by Hiroshige

Hiroshige included a poem by a Japanese poet called Hachijintei on this picture of an owl:

Sailing right along
on a three-day crescent moon,
the long-eared owl longs
for an earful of music:
the pines humming in the wind.

Cheap fans made of bamboo and paper were popular in Hiroshige's day.

People used them for a summer and then threw them away.

Hiroshige made a huge number of pictures for fans.

6. Picture of mountains and the sea by Hiroshige and a fan frame

In the sticky heat of the Japanese summer everyone used fans to keep cool.

They were made of prints stuck onto a bamboo frame with a handle.

Not many people kept these fans.

So this is one of the few pictures that Hiroshige made for fans to survive.

7. Picture of two men on a river by Hiroshige

Men from a nearby village work in a peaceful landscape.

Their boats drift down the gentle Narai River.

One boat is piled with charcoal. The other is made of logs.

The rising moon can be seen through the branches of a tree.

8. Picture of a large black fish by Hiroshige

An enormous black fish seems to leap high into the air.

People used to wave banners like this during the Boys' Day Festival.

Hiroshige often puts a large object at the front of his pictures like this.

The rooftops and mountains behind seem very far away.

Hiroshige's pictures became very popular in Europe and America after he died.

Artists in Japan and all over the world still like to look at his work.

It gives them ideas about how to make their own pictures.

9. Picture of the river without the two men by Abe

The Japanese artist Koya Abe lives in New York.

This is his version of Hiroshige's picture of two men on a river.

In his picture Abe shows how sad he felt when there was a huge earthquake in Japan.

The boatmen, village and tree branches have gone.

10. Picture of a large red fish by Allchurch

British artist Emily Allchurch based this picture on Hiroshige's picture of a huge fish banner.

She took lots of photos in Japan to make her own version of this picture.

She put the photos together on a computer.