For This Art Fair I have selected five drawings from the Tokaido Road series which I have been working on intermittently since 2014. The series will eventually consist of 55 drawings, each named after one of the 53 stations along this Japanese trade route and of the two cities Edo and Kyoto, the capitals of the shogun and the emperor and the starting and terminus of Tokaido Road, which literally means Eastern Sea Route.

The Japanese master Ando Hiroshige (1797-1850) has made a large number of editions of woodcuts portraying the stations of Tokaido Road. Particularly those prints that depict the stations and landscapes in the rain presented me with the motive for my drawings.

So I bow deeply for the great master in my attempt to translate his subject matter to the flat Dutch landscape and the rain showers that pass by like gray columns in the distance.

Ido Vunderink