Exhibitions Snow Country Woodcuts of the Japanese Winter 2 October 2012 -13 January 2013 Shiba Gallery (14) Japanese artists have long responded to the beauty of a world changed by frozen forms and stilled by a blanket of white snow. This selection of prints by artists such as Hokusai and Hiroshige includes stories from poetry and myth, with journeys, ambushes and skirmishes in the snow; children throwing snowballs and building snow-rabbits; the everyday struggle of travellers making their way through snowdrifts; the stillness of people indoors gazing out at the unbroken spell of freshly fallen snow; and the almost abstract world of a pure snowy landscape where people play little part. All works in the exhibition are from the Fitzwilliam Museum’s collection. For complementary events see pages 17 & 18.
Utagawa Hiroshige (1797-1858), Mount Yuka in Bizen Province, 1858 (detail), colour print from woodblocks Utagawa Kuniteru (active 1830-60), Rolling a snow ball, c.1840 (detail), colour print from woodblocks Utagawa Kuniyasu (1794-1832), The kabuki actors Segawa KikunojŌ V and BandŌ MitsugorŌ III, 1858 (detail), colour print from woodblocks, with blind embossing and white pigment spattered by hand for the snow Utagawa Kunisada (1786-1865), Winter - Shinobazu Pond, 1858 (detail), colour print from woodblocks
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