二代歌川広重　「亜墨利加」|“America”: A Native American Woman on Horseback in the Snow

Utagawa Hiroshige II

1860 · Woodblock print (nishiki-e); ink and color on paper; vertical ōban · Asian Art

In Yokohama prints, created to memorialize the arrival of foreigners in Japan in the mid-1850s, Americans were generally visualized in two different ways: either in fanciful representations of Native Americans, as seen here, or as elaborately garbed white aristocrats. Such stereotypes were created when artists, lacking direct experience of foreigners, relied on visual information through unreliable sources such as newspaper cartoons and other printed ephemera.

Artist

Utagawa Hiroshige II

Date

1860

Medium

Woodblock print (nishiki-e); ink and color on paper; vertical ōban

Culture

Japan

Department

Asian Art

Credit line

Bequest of William S. Lieberman, 2005