Japonaiserie: Bridge in the Rain (after Hiroshige)

Vincent van Gogh made this painting in Paris in October and November 1887, using a woodblock print by Utagawa Hiroshige as his starting point. The original was Hiroshige’s 1857 print Sudden Shower over Shin-Ōhashi Bridge and Atake, from his celebrated series One Hundred Famous Views of Edo. Van Gogh was then collecting Japanese prints with his brother Theo and studying them closely. He made this work as an oil-paint translation rather than a simple reproduction, adapting the print’s effects to his own materials. The green border and Japanese characters were Van Gogh’s own additions: he copied characters from other Japanese prints and arranged them decoratively around the image. They do not form a coherent message, suggesting that Van Gogh was interested as much in the visual rhythm of Japanese writing as in its literal meaning. Japanese prints had become widely available in Europe after Japan opened to foreign trade, and they shaped an important current of late nineteenth-century art. This painting records a formative Paris-period encounter that helped Van Gogh develop the bolder, more personal language associated with Post-Impressionism.