Affiches Bridge in Rain after Hiroshige by Vincent Van Gogh

Bridge in the Rain (after Hiroshige) by Vincent Van Gogh, oil on canvas 1887, is a landscape painting of figures crossing a bridge over a river in the rain, copied from a print by the Japanese ukiyo-e artist Utagawa Hiroshige. Van Gogh avidly studied and collected Japanese prints, as their bold contours, flat areas of color and lack of shadows and modeling influenced many of the Impressionist artists and contributed greatly to Vincent’s mature, Post-Impressionist style. Here Van Gogh altered the colors of the original somewhat and added a decorative border with calligraphic Japanese characters, rendering the composition is his own bold strokes of thickly applied, impasto oil color. Vincent Van Gogh (1853 - 1890) was a Dutch painter of the Post-Impressionist movement known for bold, expressive drawing, swirling brushstrokes and bold, heightened colors. In early adulthood Van Gogh worked as an art dealer, teacher and pastor before taking up the full time study of drawing and painting in his late twenties. Influenced by Rembrandt, the 19th century Realists and Barbizon school, Van Gogh's early paintings featured studies of workers and peasants in somber earth tones. Moving to France in 1886, Van Gogh met with the startling innovations of the Impressionist painters and began to apply their approach to color and subject matter, which continued into the mature style for which the artist is most renowned. Van Gogh produced many hundreds of drawings and paintings including portraits, landscapes, still life and flower paintings, and numerous self-portraits that became a dominating influence on the modern art of the 20th century and made him one of the most popular artists of all time.