850 Hiroshige Prints From the Alan Medaugh Collection Head to Christie's New York

A collection of 850 prints by Utagawa Hiroshige — the largest such holding in private hands outside Japan — is coming to auction at Christie's in New York on 15 September. The sale, titled "Hiroshige: Colors of the Four Seasons | The Alan Medaugh Collection" (sale 25167), brings together works assembled over half a century by a single American collector.

ARTnews reported the auction on 11 August. Christie's Japanese Art department is promoting the live sale through its New York calendar.

Alan Medaugh built the collection gradually across five decades. Hiroshige, who died in 1858, is one of the last great masters of the ukiyo-e tradition — woodblock prints and paintings depicting the floating world of Japan's urban pleasure districts, landscapes and theatre culture. His series One Hundred Famous Views of Edo and The Fifty-Three Stations of the Tokaido are among the most reproduced images in Japanese art.

The scale of the holding is unusual. The Financial Times, reporting in May 2025, confirmed the collection's size of 850 works and described it as the largest in private hands outside Japan. Most Hiroshige prints survive in small groups, scattered across museum storerooms and private collections; a single-owner trove of this breadth rarely appears on the open market.

Medaugh is not a name known primarily for dealing. His relationship with institutions has been a gift-giving one. He donated 35 Hiroshige prints to the American Friends of the British Museum, a fund-raising body that channels philanthropic support to the London institution. The British Museum marked the gift with an exhibition, "Hiroshige: artist of the open road," announced in a press release in February 2025. The Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures noted the donation again in September 2025.

The exhibition placed Medaugh's gift in context alongside the British Museum's existing Hiroshige holdings, drawing attention to the collector's eye for landscape and nature subjects. The 35 donated prints remain with the museum. What goes to Christie's in September is the balance of the collection — the portion Medaugh held back.

For collectors and enthusiasts of Japanese prints, the sale is a rare chance to see a large body of Hiroshige's work presented as a curated group, with seasonal themes running through the title's "Colors of the Four Seasons." Whether the market will treat individual lots as museum-quality acquisitions or trade-level purchases will become clear on the day.

Christie's has not yet published individual lot estimates. The auction house's calendar lists the sale as a live event in New York on 15 September.