[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/ChatGPT-Image-Aug-11-2026-at-11_11_15-AM.png?w=1024″]<\/p>\n
\n\tFor decades, if you wanted to talk about Japanese prints, the conversation usually began and ended with Hokusai\u2019s\u00a0Great Wave<\/em>. That may be starting to change.<\/p>\n \n\tThis September, Christie\u2019s will begin selling more than 600 prints from the collection of Alan Medaugh, an American businessman who spent half a century chasing the finest impressions he could find by Utagawa Hiroshige, Hokusai\u2019s great rival and one of the towering figures of Japanese printmaking. Specialists say the collection ranks among the finest ever assembled. The first auction, on September 15 in New York, will include more than 180 prints.\u00a0The timing might be ideal.<\/p>\n \n\tThe market for Japanese prints has quietly become one of the auction world\u2019s success stories. Hokusai has led the charge, with exceptional impressions of\u00a0The Great Wave<\/em>\u00a0regularly smashing expectations. Last year, Sotheby\u2019s\u00a0sold one from the Okada Museum collection for $2.8 million\u2014nearly three times its high estimate\u2014as part of an $88 million sale that underscored collectors\u2019 appetite for top-tier Japanese material.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tNow Christie\u2019s believes Hiroshige is having a moment of his own. \u201cOver the past six or seven years, we have regularly raised our estimates,\u201d Takaaki Murakami, Christie\u2019s head of Japanese and Korean Art, told\u00a0ARTnews<\/em>. \u201cYet even as the estimates are growing, when we take an average of all our results, lots have doubled their low estimates over this period.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tMurakami said the market has become noticeably more international, with younger collectors, the holy grail among art dealers and auction houses, entering the category and demand spreading well beyond Japan. In his view, the best Hiroshige prints remain undervalued when compared with Hokusai.<\/p>\n \n\tThat is precisely the kind of print Medaugh spent more than half his life pursuing. He bought his first Hiroshige while visiting Japan with his wife shortly after they were married. At the time, he thought he\u2019d simply found an attractive print. Only later did he begin to notice something else: one impression looked a little sharper than another. One had richer color. Another preserved details that had disappeared. The hunt was on.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tOver the next 50 years, Medaugh made more than two dozen trips to Japan, haunted museums, read everything he could find and slowly refined his eye. Instead of buying more prints, he often bought more books. By the end, he had assembled roughly 700 Hiroshige works, always chasing the earliest impressions in the best condition.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cI think it actually was seeing the different moods he could create with color,\u201d Medaugh said. \u201cWhen you see a really fresh print\u2026 there are some that have been real survivors.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tThat obsession might sound on the esoteric side, but it sits at the\u00a0heart of today\u2019s market. Japanese woodblock prints were produced from carved blocks that gradually wore down. The earliest impressions preserve crisper lines, subtler gradations of color and details that often disappear after hundreds of additional printings. For serious collectors, those differences can mean the difference between a good print and a great one. They can also mean a dramatically different price.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tHiroshige\u2019s reputation has also grown outside the auction room. His\u00a0One Hundred Famous Views of Edo<\/em>\u00a0inspired artists from Van Gogh to Monet, and last year Takashi Murakami devoted a major Gagosian exhibition to\u00a0studying the series, describing it as a path back to the origins of modern painting.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tMedaugh turns 83 this month, and he said the decision to sell wasn\u2019t driven by the market alone. \u201cI don\u2019t want some guy winding up in the estate wondering what to do with these things,\u201d he said. Better, he figured, to be an active part in find the next custodians. After all, many of the prints have already passed through a long chain of owners over nearly two centuries.<\/p>\n \n\tAs for what he\u2019ll do with the proceeds? The retired financier hasn\u2019t decided yet. Although he admits he may start \u201canother small collection.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n [analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/art-news\/news\/christies-alan-medaugh-hiroshige-collection-auction-1234794665\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/ChatGPT-Image-Aug-11-2026-at-11_11_15-AM.png?w=1024″] For decades, if you wanted to talk about Japanese prints, the conversation usually began and ended with Hokusai\u2019s\u00a0Great Wave. That may be starting to change. This September, Christie\u2019s will begin selling more than 600 prints from the collection of Alan Medaugh, an American businessman who spent half a century chasing the finest […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,226],"class_list":["post-2088495","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-artnews-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2088495","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2088495"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2088495\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2088495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2088495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2088495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}