Print of Vincent van Gogh - Bridge in the rain (after Hiroshige) - 1887
Vincent van Gogh - Bridge in the Rain (after Hiroshige)
Year: 1887 - oil on canvas cm 54x73
Preserved at: Van Gogh Museumm, Amsterdam, Holland.
Vincent van Gogh was fascinated by Japanese art. In a letter to his brother Theo dated November 28, 1885, the Dutch painter wrote that he had hung a small series of Japanese prints on the walls of his atélier: "my studio is now more bearable". Vincent Van Gogh found "very amusing" those "small female figures in the gardens or on the shore, the horsemen, the flowers, the thorny and twisted branches".
Vincent van Gogh was able to deepen his knowledge of Japanese prints when he moved, in 1886, to Paris, where they were practically everywhere because they had become fashionable.
Among the various prints that Vincent Van Gogh purchased for his personal collection (the Japanese, as he called them), there was also that of Utagawa Hiroshige (1797 - 1858) with the famous Bridge of Shin-Ōhashi in the rain, which the painter wanted to reproduce: the Bridge in the rain (after Hiroshige). Vincent van Gogh enriched the painting by making a frame with fake scriptures, meaningless but which contribute to giving an exotic and oriental tone to the works.
