There's a tiny label in the upper right corner of this print that tells a second story. It says "Au Printemps" - a Parisian department store - and a price: 0 fr. 95. Less than one franc. That's what Hiroshige's vision cost a Parisian shopper in the late nineteenth century. Ando Hiroshige's "8 Views of the Kanazawa Temple" - from his Hundred Famous Views of the Provinces series - traveled from an Edo workshop to a department store shelf in Paris, priced somewhere between a bar of soap and a ribbon. Japonisme wasn't just an aesthetic movement; it was a retail event. Prints like these arrived in France by the thousands, sometimes as coveted collectibles, sometimes wrapped around exported ceramics as packing material. That zigzag staircase cutting diagonally up a sheer cliff, tiny figures visible near the base, deep Prussian blue bleeding into blue-green pines. The architecture glows pale against dark rock. Hiroshige died in 1858; decades later, his prints were still sold in Paris for pocket change. The sticker outlasted him. The department store closed. The temple endures. Quelle: meisterdrucke.com
