Artist: Utagawa Hiroshige Title: Asakusa Ricefields Medium: Fine Art Giclee on Canvas Image Size: Approximately 20 inches x 12 ¾ inches Framed: Unframed on Unstretched Canvas Biography: Utagawa Hiroshige, born AndÅ Hiroshige (C. 1797 – 12 October 1858), was a Japanese ukiyo-e artist, considered the last great master of that tradition. Hiroshige is best known for his horizontal-format landscape series The Fifty-three Stations of the TÅkaidÅ and for his vertical-format landscape series One Hundred Famous Views of Edo. The subjects of his work were atypical of the ukiyo-e genre, whose typical focus was on beautiful women, popular actors, and other scenes of the urban pleasure districts of Japan's Edo period (1603–1868). The popular series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji by Hokusai was a strong influence on Hiroshige's choice of subject, though Hiroshige's approach was more poetic and ambient than Hokusai's bolder, more formal prints.