The Masters of Ukiyoye
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The Masters of Ukioye: a Complete Historical Description of Japanese Paintings and Color Prints of the Genre School, New York: The Knickerbocker Press, 1896.
PREFACE.
In arranging a chronological exhibition of works by the Masters of the XJkioye, or Popular School of Japanese Artists, Mr. Ketcham has rendered a service to students and lovers of Japanese Art for which they should be very grateful. That the exhibition has been undertaken partly for commercial reasons does not lessen the obligation. In addition to the selections made from Mr. Ketcham's extensive stock, it includes also, through the kindness of their owners in loaning them for the occasion, a large proportion of the finest and most beautiful works belonging to private collections in the United States. Nothing like it has ever been attempted before. For the first time does a connected series of paintings and prints by all of the leading artists of this school, hung together in proper sequence, make it possible to gain a comprehensive view of the history of Ukioye art through all the phases of its rise, development, and decay. Especially is this true as regards the Nishikiyi, or color prints from wood blocks, which are the most distinctive product of the school. Here may be seen rare proof-impressions from early blocks, which are printed in soUd black, with no attempt at gradations of tone. The several varieties of hand-colored prints are represented by many fine examples. Then in the Nishikiye proper may be traced the growing mastery of the artists over the resources of the printer's craft. The works of the earlier men are notable for combined vigor of conception and sweetness of line, rather than for especial beauty of color. There is, however, a charm in their quiet simplicity which is lacking in the works of later periods ; and some of the prints for which, in addition to the black outline, but two tint- blocks were used, are exquisitely lovely in color, as well as wonderful achievements in design. After Torii Kiyomitsu began the use of a third color-block, the rivalry between many able artists resulted in rapid prog- ress, imtil the art reached its highest development in strength and beauty of design, in richness and variety of color, and in perfection of printing, in the time of the great master Torii Kiyonaga and his contemporaries. The works shown in this exhibition make it possible to follow this development throughout, and to trace the subsequent decline of the art, at first gradual, then more rapid, as the creative impulse which stimulated the masters of the eighteenth century died out, and little was left beyond mere delight in
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technical proficiency. The brief renaissance due to the genius of Hokusai and Hiroshige is illustrated by some superb examples of their finest produc- tions. That few works of their contemporaries and followers are shown is not because the art became extinct after the death of these men, but for the reason that their aesthetic value is so small.
It was a happy idea to show paintings and prints in connection with each other. Only by seeing both together is it possible to gain more than a one-sided and incomplete view of the aims and evolution of the school. Many of the Ukioye artists were both painters and designers of prints. Some of them were painters only ; others made but few drawings for repro- duction ; whilst others gave their attention so exclusively to print-designing, that few, and in some cases no, paintings by them are known to exist. Nor was it unusual even for some of the most renowned designers of Nishikiye to suddenly give up drawing for publishers and thereafter devote themselves to painting alone.
In still another respect this exhibition is unique. Thanks to the able assistance of Mr. Ernest F. Fenollosa of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the pictures and prints are shown with the dates accurately ascribed to them. Of Mr. Fenollosa' s qualifications for this work it is scarcely necessary to speak, as he is well known as pre-eminently the most competent authority upon the history of Oriental Art in the Far West. But it may be of interest to state that the determination of dates has been reached by a most careful comparison of a very large number of works. To this task he brought the critical methods of the modem scientific investigator, the penetrative insight of the student of Oriental philosophy, the fine perception of the artist, and the intimate knowledge of Japanese manners and customs acquired during his twelve years' residence in Dai Nippon. Aside from the internal evidence of the changes in each artist's manner from year to year, the costumes depicted, taken in connection with records of contemporaneous events, and especially the history of the theatre, have furnished the most reliable index. For in Japan, no less than in the Occident, fashion has held tyrannical sway from time immemorial. The changes have, perhaps, been within a narrower range in Japan than in Europe during the last one hundred and fifty years, but they have been no less frequent. From the style of a woman's coifiiire alone it is often possible to determine the date of a print or painting ; and taken in con- nection with the fashion of the garments depicted, the manner of wearing the obi, and the patterns of the brocades, even the season of the year may some- times be arrived at with reasonable certainty.
The Popular School of Japanese Art is different from all the other schools, in that it is the art of the common people. If it did not, even in its palmiest days, give to the world works which touch the highest note in the gamut of artistic production, or arrive at the dignity of the classical schools, we are indebted to it for the most beautiful specimens of the printers' art which have ever been executed in any land or at any time. To this state- ment the present exhibition bears eloquent testimony. And from it another
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valuable lesson may be gleaned by those who have eyes to see. And that is that even the most trivial and commonplace subject may be so presented as to invest it with aesthetic value. It would be difficult, indeed, to find more striking examples of the truth that Art lies in treatment, and that the real subject of the artist is not necessarily the nominal one, but what he expresses by means of it.
Frkdkrick W. Gookin.
CATALOGUE.
i. IwASA Matahei About 1630.
Painting on a screen of two panels.
A lad}' with musical instrument and pupil.
The Ukioye is a school of Japanese painting and print designing, which for the last three centuries has been the special organ of ex- pression for the common people. Its artists, sprung mostly from the ranks of the people, confined their subjects to the occupations and recreations of their class. Kvery change of fashion in the gay life of the capital at Yedo was faithfully followed in their drawings ; and thus the Ukioye, unlike the hieratic and idealistic schools of earlier days, has the charm of being a complete mirror of Japanese life. At first confined to painting, it soon spread with the discovery of block printing into book illustration ; and still later into the elaborate single sheet print which could be used on the wall for a cheap picture. When these prints, at first colored by hand, became embellished with flat tints printed from wooden blocks, the most splendid results of the school were reached.
The founder of this school was Iwasa Matahei. Previous to his day, the end of the sixteenth century, Japanese art and civilization were dominated by Chinese ideals, as were the nations of mediaeval Europe by classic tradition. But the overthrow of the Ashikaga court, and the rise to power of upstarts like Hideyoshi, brought Jap- anese life and character again into the field of interest. It is true that scenes of native court life and of earlier dynastic wars had been occa- sionally painted by the court artists of the Kano and Tosa schools ; Taut with Matahei began the painting of contemporary life, or genre; and his are the first of the long and full series we possess of scenes in the life of Japanese women of the middle and lower classes.
Matahei was first a pupil of the ancient Tosa school, later of the Kano. His third manner, of about 1620, fuses and enriches the two styles by a new line-drawing of expressive beauty and clinging grace. His fourth and last manner is a rise to complete realistic rendering, whose force absorbs, but does not destroy the grace of outline. His work is confined to painting, and is extremely rare.
This specimen of Matahei is one of the finest and largest remaining' of his fourth manner. The easy pose of the large figures, the fine but not over-graceful flow of line, the careful drawing of details as in the hands, the breadth of the main masses, and especially the strong contrast of the black and white robes, all contribute to its striking- force. Nothing at once so simple, and yet so full of the feeling of real presence, occurs again in the course of Ukioye.
2. School of Matahei About 1650.
Painting on a small panel.
Female dancer. The new movement begun so brilliantly by Matahei found no worthy continuator for a generation. Whether the interest in Japanese sub- jects temporarily waned on the founding of the new tyranny at Yedo, whether the people of the new capital were yet unconscious of a life and standard apart from the nobility, or whether the genius of Matahei was too personal for transmission, it is clear that between 1630 and 1670 only a scattered series of weak imitations was produced, mostly unsigned, and with no common quality of style to merit the name of school. It is a sort of interregnum in Ukioye, with no dominant master.
This painting is a good average specimen of the work. While far inferior to Matahei in drawing, in the large quality of the dress design and in the fine color it reminds of his day.
3. HiSHIGAWA MORONOBU. .... . About I675.
I<arge print in black.
An incident of a historic battle.
I^ent by Charles J. Morse of Chicago.
During the interregnum the newly discovered art of book illustration offered the most hopeful line of advance. The block cutting became stronger and freer, more like the stroke of the Japanese pen. About 1770 Moronobu, a designer of extraordinary power, entered this field, and produced the first in that rich series of woodcuts of Japanese life which culminates in the present century with Hokusai. Relying upon the extraordinary force of his ink-strokes and the fine simple massing of his blacks, he cared little to embellish the design with landscape background or fine detail. His earliest works are the strongest in this respect, and are eagerly sought for by book col- lectors.
Even before Moronobu' s day there had been an attempt to cheapen pictorial production by an issue of editions of rapid brush sketches, called Otsuye. These probably gave Moronobu the clew to the single sheet print, into which he now threw the finest qualities of his book illustration. They were generally left in the black impression of the
single *block ; but sometimes touched by hand with spots of orange and green after the manner of the Otsuye.
This is one of the earliest of Moron obu's large single sheet impres- sions, showing his most vigorous design and splendid massing of the flat blacks. Its subject does not properly belong to the Ukioye, but to the illustration of history.
MoRONOBu . . About 1780.
Painting on a panel.
Female figure, walking.
Moronobu was not only a designer of ink prints, but a painter also. In this line he took the traditions of the Matahei school as a starting point ; but his early training as a designer for embroideries tended to enrich the sharp color details of his dress patterns. Here his com- mand of strong line is deliberately sacrificed to delicate grace, yet one feels the draughtsman under the faint lines. He introduced a gay sunny coloring in which red and white predominate.
His work first does justice to the splendid coiffure of the Japanese female head, whose forms become exceedingly large and rich between 1780 and 1790, and whose subsequent rapid variations afford a most important key to the determination of dates.
This specimen is a good example of the style described. There has been no such grace of posture and flowing line since the days of Ma- tahei. The design of the costume is bizarre and cut up, showing something of the extravagance in which the dawning consciousness of a popular taste ran away with itself toward the close of the century.
Moronobu About 1690.
Large ink print.
Standing court lady.
Moronobu' s style may be said to have come to its ripeness at the be- ginning of the famous period Genroku, 1688. It combines the firm- ness of line of his earlier prints with the delicate design and proportion of his paintings. The figures become more stately, the heads more solid. Paintings of this date and book illustrations abound. But a single sheet print is the rarity of a collection.
This is the finest large single sheet print in the manner of Morono- bu's Genroku paintings. It establishes the first ripe style since the days of Matahei. It marks the second and permanent founding of Ukioye as a separate branch of Japanese pictorial art. It achieves a self-conscious mastery that can be taught. Moronobu has hosts of pupils in his atelier. A school has been founded.
Moronobu About 1794.
Painting on a kakemono. Picnic by a river's bank.
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The populace of Genroku was given over to every sort of extrava- gance and gay dissipation. The world was full of fairs and puppet shows and wild street dances. As ever fond of out-of-door enjoyments they delighted in picnics, in drinking and music, in boating parties and horse races. Though the patterns were not large, the widest license was granted in the color of costumes. Soft, indescribable shades of pink and blue and green shot like the threads of their own shuttles through the warp of the blossoming boughs. In technique Moronobu's landscape detail was much like that of the Kano. He delighted in long panoramic rows of street scenes crowded with fig- ures. The effect is always refined and brilliant, even if a little hard. It is this style which became the most common with his many follow- ers, and is often reproduced on screens as late as 1715.
This is a typical specimen of Moronobu's last manner and of the school in general. It renders for us in color the rich figure composi- tions of his illustrated books.
7. MiYAGAWA Choshun About 1710.
Painting on small screen of two panels.
Interior with group of girls.
When after the death of Moronobu it became demonstrated that his pupils could conceive of nothing else than reproducing his manner, a revolt was quickly started by four young men at the commencement of the eighteenth century. The self-consciousness of the people was becoming too strong, too antagonistic to the formality of the Samu- rai's life, to allow any new tyranny to spring up in its own ranks. Provided it did not interfere with politics, it was granted by the gov- ernment free license for enjoyment ; and one of the greatest and new- est of its enjoyments was art. Even the art of Moronobu was seen to be too hard and formal, partaking of the classic purity of Kano design. The aim of these younger men was to create an art as rich and free and new as their own lives. Rejecting all trace of idealism, it frankly loses itself in pleasure and splendor. But here, fortu- nately for the Ukioye, it creates a new ideal for itself in the concep- tion of this splendor. In line it substitutes for the restrained grace of its predecessors a decorative abandon and sumptuousness in drapery. In pattern it avoids the patches of small design characteristic of Gen- roku, and delights in large plaids, suggestions of flowers and leaves, and sudden changes in the ground color, which give scope for a more organic treatment in the harmony. The color, as such, no longer con- ceived in conventional costume, discovers laws and beauties of its own. It is especially in its coloring that Ukioye now adds a new and splendid note to the sum of Japanese art.
Of these young contemporaries Miyagawa Choshun, himself a pupil of Moronobu, strikes in painting the new note. A more crea-
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tive colorist than Moronobu, he never designed for illustration for single sheet prints. And yet a study of the history of Ukioye, even of the prints, would, without him, lose one of its strongest links. His subjects are much like those of Moronobu, picnic and street scenes, or portraits of noted belles ; but the new method of drawing the strange patterns so as to enhance the sweep of the drapery, and their conception as factors in a creative color-scheme, give his work a softness and breadth which are its distinguishing features. He is the centre of a large group of painters who, if not always his personal pupils, borrow from him these characteristics.
This beautiful clear sample of Choshun's middle manner exempli- fies well the points made. In the group at the right of the screen, especially, every touch palpitates with color sensitiveness. Strange harmonious culminations of line and tone are everywhere developed.
8. Choshun About 1720.
Painting on a kakemono.
Standing girl and attendant.
Here is an exemplification of Choshun's latest manner. The touch of the brush is intensely strong and nervous, the contrasts more vio- lent, the figures taller and the heads less square. It is probably a great loss to art that Choshun never attempted prints.
9. MiYAGAWA Choki About 1725.
Painting on a panel.
I^ady reading under a willow tree.
Choki is the son of Choshun and one of the most original of his fol- lowers, who, like their master, devote themselves entirely to painting. The qualities of breadth developed by the father are still present in the son, but united to a strange thickness of color which pursues the Ukioye in his wandering from classic paths. But it is rich and splen- did and revels in color scales before unsounded.
10. MiYAGAWA Shunsui About 1740.
Painting on a kakemono.
Lady washing her hair.
Shunsui, possibly a second son of Choshun, but certainly a personal pupil, carries the line of the sweet painting of female subjects down through the very centre of the seventeenth century, unmingled with the quality of contemporary theatrical schools which we shall pres- ently consider. His work is always original, full of distinction, and subtle in color. It is not without reason, as we shall see, that this work foreshadows much of the gentle delineation of women so much better known in Harunobu.
11. Katsukawa Shunsui About 1750.
Painting on a kakemono.
I^ady in black.
Some have said tbat this Shunsui is a pupil of the former ; but a com- parison of their styles and handwriting confirms another tradition, that Shunsui in later life determined to change his family name. Un- der the name of Katsukawa he worked at least within the limits of the years 1750 and 1765. This new name interests us because it was that taken by his famous pupil Katsukawa Shunsho, the teacher of the still more famous Hokusai. Through this name one main line of descent in the history of Ukioye is manifest.
In Shunsui's later work his style and color pass from the exquisite- ness of broken masses to the exquisiteness of simple breadth. In this work is foreshadowed the technical qualities of Shunsho' s well known painting. Toward the end of his life a few prints with his signature appear, but exercise no special influence.
12. TsuNEYUKi About 1725.
Painting on circular panel.
Girls playing at football. I^et us now go back to another of the pupils or personal friends of Choshun. This man, Tsuneyuki, one of the greatest artists of Uki- oye, is unmentioned in its written annals. The refinement of his feel- ing, the quality of his touch, as in the tree trunk, and the first charac- ter of his name, make it extremely probable that he was first a pupil of Kano Tsunenobu before he entered this freer, if humbler field. But in the breadth and originality of his color he is a true son of Ukioye and Choshun's strongest successor. In the group of figures on the right the newness of the disposition of patterns is finely brought out.
13. TsuNEMASA About 1768.
Painting on a panel.
Girl seated at a tea-house. Here is another artist exceptionally prolific whose work in painting extends over a period from 1720 to 1770, but whose name is barely mentioned in the history of the Ukioye. Throughout he is a broad and original colorist. His early work is exactly in the style of Tsuneyuki, whose pupil he unquestionably was. I^ater it is clear that he fell under the influence of Shunsui ; and in a sense it may be said that in connection with Shunsui he heads the great school of painters of women through the transition period of the century. The likeness of his feeling to that of Harunobu is here the more strongly noticeable than in the case of Shunsui, in that he is a contemporary of Harunobu.
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14- TsuNEMASA About 1770.
Painting on a kakemon.
Street scene on New Year's day.
Here the similarity to Harunobu is enforced by the fact of the color in the architectural background which forms an organic relation to the color in the figures. The sweet femininity of these slight willowy forms is surpassed only by those of Harunobu himself.
J5. Kaigetsudo About 1708.
Painting on a panel.
I,arge standing girl.
But of all the painters who carried on the movement headed by Choshun by far the most powerful and striking was Kaigetsudo. In spite of his mannerisms and the smallness of his heads, hands, and feet, the lines of his drapery are conceived and executed with a passionate splendor, in which the power of the Japanese brush to modulate the thickness of its stroke is like the fulness of tone from some great wind instrument. Here the master stroke lies in the fold at the neck and in the system of long curves into which the hems of the skirts are caught up by the right hand. Kaigetsudo is also an original colorist of the greatest breadth, but lacking somewhat in the refinement of Choshun. He may be regarded as in some sense a con- necting link between the school of Choshun and that of Kiyonobu, which we have soon to describe.
36. Kaigetsudo. About 1705.
Large ink print.
Young girl swinging her sleeve.
What splendors Kaigetsudo could create as a master of line and of dark and light alone are here fully exhibited. The sweep of the lines of the lighter undergarment, in whose folds the raised left hand is hidden, coming into opposition with the falling darker, stifier mass of the cast-ofi" outer sleeve, creates the most startlingly original line scheme in the whole range of the art. What composition in dark and light, too, can mean for its own sake, is revealed in the heavy, clouded passages shot with the white lightning of poetic characters.
17. Kaigetsudo. About 17 10.
I^arge ink print.
Girl seated upon a box.
Ivcnt by Charles J. Morse of Chicago. This specimen of line work in print, by the only man of the Choshun school who has left us any, is hardly less striking and original than the preceding. The system of lines about the legs suggests in force and grandeur the religious paintings of Ririomin, the great Chinese artist of the eleventh century. It is notable that at this date the arrangement of the hair is the simplest and most solid of any period ia
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the three centuries of Ukioye. In works by Kaigetsudo various names appear signed under the main one. The commonest of these are Takuhan and Anchi. It is not certain whether these are different men or the same. Both these prints are by Takuhan.
1 8. Okumura Masanobu About 1700.
Print colored by hand.
A street procession with puppets.
Of the four young men who at the commencement of the eighteenth century struck out into new paths diverging from the art of Moro- nobu, the school of one, namely, Choshun, we have studied to its latest developments in the third generation. We must now go back and see what the other three young men were doing. These three were Torii Kiyonobu, Torii Kiyomasu, and Okumura Masanobu. All had been trained in the more classic style of Moronobu. All aimed now to be the leaders in a popular movement, of whose separate art they had become conscious. While all three were painters of distinction, it is because, unlike Choshun, they devoted their attention primarily to the art of printing, that they were destined to exercise such a dominating influence upon the whole course of the Ukioye. I,iving and working, all three, to the ripe age of something like eighty, with- out exhaustion of their creative powers, their influence continued supreme over three generations. It is not an exaggeration to say- that nine-tenths of the Ukioye during the first half of the last century is their work. In spite of personal peculiarities, they form together, with their prints and their peculiar coloring, a line quite separate from, and parallel to that of Choshun.
If Matahei was the originator of the Ukioye idea, and Moronobu the father of its art, these three men can be regarded as the founders of its distinctive style. They had a new world to mirror, new techni- cal methods to invent. At first their subjects remind us of those of Moronobu ; but almost from the first a new motive enters into their work with the development at Yedo of the legitimate theatre under Japan's first great actor, Danjuro, of whom the present Danjuro is the tenth descendent. That this histrionic art, shunned by the nobility, was rapidly becoming an organ of self-expression for the common peo- ple, destined to create out of them almost a new race, gave to these artists not only a multiplicity of popular and ever-varying groups to de- pict, but also the spur to develop the single sheet print as a rival organ. Under Moronobu such prints had been rare ; now they were issued in editions of hundreds and thousands, and exported to the provinces. Another difference is that up to this day Ukioye had been chiefly the art of the more conservative Kioto. It now became the art of Yedo, which was rising into prominence as a centre of gayety and fashion, like Paris in France. Still another line was opened in the develop-
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ment of fiction as an important art to whose illustration these three men contributed the lighter phase of their prolific powers. It is to the dates upon these novelettes that we have to rely in identifying the years of the rapidly changing single sheet prints.
From now on we have to distinguish more carefully between periods marked by technical changes. It is not possible properly to group the art of any one of these three men by itself We must deal with each phase of their common work in the group, noting such minor differences as from time to time arise. The first period is that which lasts firom about 1700 to about 1715 ; and is characterized chiefly by bold, rich line-work analogous to that of Kaigetsudo. The prints, many of them of large size, are for the most part left in black and white ; and their occasional coloring by hand was probably confined to the artist's treatment of individual impressions, not lavished upon a whole edition.
Masanobu, whose work we now first reach, was probably the oldest of the three, and the most graceful and refined in his personal style. His design from first to last is full of sweetness and distinction. In this specimen we have a subject that shows clearly his derivation from Moronobu ; but in the pose and motions and easy flow of drapery we find a greater vitaUty even than in that of Choshun. The Genroku type of coiffure is now becoming simpler, the fore-knot which formerly stood upright being now bent over and caught near the back of the head. Such full hand-coloring is at this day extremely rare ; and was, not improbably, executed twenty years later, possibly by Masanobu himself.
Masanobu About 1704.
Large ink print. Tall standing lady.
This is a very strange piece, and exhibits in another way the transi- tion from Moronobu. Its anomaly consists in the difference between the body and the head. The former in proportion, drapery, and stilted spotted pattern is almost indistinguishable from the style of Genroku, and the personal manner of Moronobu. It seems a remi- niscence of 1695. But the head is unquestionably by Masanobu, with the unmistakable head-dress of the period Hoyei. The fore-knot has now been drawn over close to the top of the head, and the side locks lie perfectly flat above the ear. It is uncertain whether Masa- nobu here made use of an older block by Moronobu, into which he plugged and cut a new head ; or whether he designed his patterns in the Genroku style, which for certain purposes, and in certain places, had not yet gone entirely out of fashion. It is noticeable that the design upon the obi or sash is entirely in the new manner ; and this favors the latter hypothesis that the work is all Masanobu's.
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20. ToRii KiYONOBU. . . About 1702.
Ink print.
Two women and a man playing a game.
Kiyonobu, the great founder of the Torii school, which has lasted to the present day, was in some respects at first the central figure of the new group. If Masanobu's style is sweet and feminine, his from the first is almost uncouth in its rotund simplicity, and apparently law- less disposition of large design. His faces are long and oval, with hooked noses, and eyes whose pupils thrown, to the corner, give that peculiar look distinctive of the Torii for generations. It was his work particularly that the aristocratic despisers of Ukioye, and of the popu- lar pleasures it depicted, regarded as the sign of degeneration, and con- demned as hopelessly vulgar. Yet it was this style which, breaking so utterly with the past, opened a way for all the characteristic splen- dors of the future.
21. Kiyonobu About 1702.
Ink print.
Women at toilet.
This in line and mass is a still richer specimen. The large, character- istic flower patterns are finely disposed upon the standing figure. The solidity of the composition is notable.
22. Kiyonobu About 1704.
Print colored by hand.
Group of two actors. While Kiyonobu's early interest in female subjects was a survival of Moronobu's, his acquaintance with Danjuro and familiarity with the new theatre led him into printing designs illustrating the finer mo- ments of the new plays. The interest manifested in this work led him soon to make it his specialty ; and thus his designs head that long series of actor prints which have been the delight of Yedo. All the designing, too, for the daily bills, for the guild of actors, and for the the theatrical advertisement generally, fell into his hands, and have been monopolized by his Torii descendants to this day.
This is a rare specimen of Kiyonobu's very early actor designing, ^sthetically it has all the characteristics of the piece last described. Its postures give the first hint of those which with his successors became conventional in such subjects. The use of the color, particu- larly of the orange (red lead or tan), is the commencement of a new practice, at first desultory, but which a few years later, becoming habitual, gives rise to the technical name Tanye or orange painting.
23. Kiyonobu About 1706.
lyarge ink print.
Standing lady.
This is one of the finest and rarest pieces in the collection. It exhibits Kiyonobu's power of line design at its strongest. His pen is less
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formal than Kaigetsudo's, more like the dash of Japanese brush strokes in writing. The grand disposition of large pattern marks the freedom of the new style, in which the daring introduction of figure designs on fans is a striking feature.
24. ToRii KiYOMASU About 1706.
I,arge ink print.
Girl with battledore at New Year's.
Kiyomasu, the alter ego of Kiyonobu, is set down in the books as the second of the Torii line ; and one might be led to infer that he was Kiyonobu' s son. But the fact remains that his earliest work appears almost contemporary with that of Kiyonobu, and accompanies the changes in that master's style for fifty years to their almost simulta- neous death. It seems, therefore, practically impossible that he was Kiyonobu's son ; but he was probably either a twin or younger brother. Even had he lived but a day after the latter' s death without issue, he would have been reckoned the heir. Yet is he no blind follower. Rather does it appear as if Kiyonobu had two brains and pairs of hands through which he might multiply and diversify his conceptions. Some indeed may consider Kiyomasu the stronger designer of the pair ; and in these earlier days his work, more frequently met with, seems to prove him the more prolific. But it is diflBcult surely to dis- tinguish their unsigned pieces.
Certainly no specimen could be finer than this rich print of a girlish figure at play. The sumptuous drapery is more orderly though not less free than Kiyonobu's, as complicated though less extraordinary than Kaigetsudo's. And there here appears for the first time a sjti- thesis of angular line with the sweeping curves, which seems to exhaust the possibilities of line-feeling, and to offer spaces for the rect- angular massing of the blacks, which endow them with almost an un- heard-of splendor. Not content with this, the white squares are again diversified with small figures of poets and their writings, while in the crest upon the sleeve the ruling composition of straight line with curved, and of black and white contrast is accentuated. It is such unique wealth of creative idea in terms of simple orchestration which makes these works a prize to the Occidental student, as valuable as the organ harmonies of Bach are to the musical students of all time.
25. Masanobu About 1706.
Large ink print. The flute lesson. In this fine piece one realizes that Masonobu's forte, so to speak, does not lie in strength so much as in delicacy. The river of sinuous curves ripples as placidly away as the rhythms of the sweet flute notes over these lovers' gentle souls. The hint of design on the sliding doors in the distance carries off the feeling to infinity, as one watches a long line of flying birds.
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26. KiYOMASU. . About 1710.
I^arge ink print.
Figures of two actors. Here the power of early Torii work in action rises to its height. Ki- yomasu's delight in angles seems to photograph itself upon the clear paper by the zig-zag of its own lightning strokes. The tall head- dress of the central figure cuts the sky like a blade, repeated in miniature by the black points of the picket. The grand outline curves of the pine tree, in their very power soft as a feather, throw forward by their contrast the startling group. The intensity of the blacks and their purity of imprint reveal to us that wealth, as of burnished silver planes, which in perfect values the Japanese call notan.
27. Masanobu About 1712.
Ink print.
Actors. Even in his fine strokes one feels here that Masanobu is growing in power. He seems to have borrowed something from Kiyomasu. The girl with the hand-drum is exceedingly beautiful, and the thickening of the nearer lines of the male figure achieves relief by throwing back the fainter.
28. Kiyomasu About 1712.
Print colored by hand.
Actor with a mask.
This is a typical example of the work called Tanye. It must have soon appeared that the actor prints were more attractive when colored, and by this date it is probable that the complete edition was so treated. Red lead was used in broad masses for the chief pigment, hence the name. This use was probably suggested by the slight touches of orange upon the ancient Otsuye and some of Moronobu's prints. The Tanye prevailed chiefly between 17 10 and 1715, and was soon supplanted by more careful and harmonious schemes of coloring.
29. KiYONOBU About 1715.
Hand-colored print.
Girl with a puppet.
Kiyonobu, on rejecting the Tanye, determined to produce as beautiful a quality of hand-coloring as possible. It was a new forte, this of making many fine pictures without the trouble of redrawing. For this the lines were more carefully thought out and more delicately drawn. As yet there was no use of lacquer as a black pigment. Usu- ally in these earliest color prints there was no background.
This is a most beautiful example of the new style. The lines are well cut and sharply impressed upon a fine paper. For ta^i Kiyo- nobu substituted beni, a. fugitive vegetable red. With it, and dull purple and blues, he combined in a most original way a rich yellow.
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30. KiYONOBU About 1715.
Hand-colored print.
Young man with a bucket of flowers.
This piece is as strongly drawn and even more richly colored than the last. The applied pigments have been enriched by an over-sprinkling of powdered gold in parts. Seldom in later prints was the hand-col- oring as carefully rendered.
31. ToRii KiYOTADA About 1720.
Hand-colored print.
Young girl with book.
Of all the pupils of Kiyonobu at this day Kiyotada is the best known and the most brilliant. It is not certain what his relationship to the master was ; but it is certain that he either died or ceased to produce long before the master. This exhibits well the continuation of Kiyo- nobu' s experiments in hand-coloring. There is still no background. Yellow and beni are the more brilliant pigments ; but there is now first introduced the use of black lacquer upon the sash. This use, which was continued upon the actor prints of the Torii school for the most part during the next twenty years, has given to this work the name Urushiye or lacquer painting. Another characteristic of the period is the squareness of the head, about which the hair is closely plastered, projecting only into a long flattened tail behind. Kiyotada's work is quite rare.
32. Kiyonobu About 1722.
Hand-colored print.
Two female figtures.
This is a most brilliant and finely preserved sample of the earlier Urushiye. It preserves the characteristics of the piece last mentioned, but enriches the color with a fine pale green. The colors are disposed in unusually broad masses, and it is noticeable that the lines of drapery on the black lacquered dress are made visible by deeply impressing them into the surface, which seems to stand out in relief. Here, too, the patterns are unusually simple and broad, and the composition of the graceful figures is unusually close.
33. Kiyonobu About 1725.
Painting on a kakemono.
A theatrical dispute.
Heretofore we have studied Kiyonobu only as a designer for prints ; here we see the subtle quality of his drawing and the wonderful rich- ness of his full color- work. Our understanding of these strange prints of the actor school is greatly aided by a study of this work. "We grasp the creative idea in the faded reds, the warm browns, and the glossy blacks. It is color quite unlike anything seen before in Japan. It is a keynote of the Torii movement.
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This very painting has also an interesting history. Representing the first or the second Danjuro in one of his strongest scenes, it has remained from Kiyonobu's day as the greatest treasure in the house of his successors, from the last of whom it was directly purchased two years ago.
34. ZiYOMASu About 1725.
Hand-colored print.
Actor, male figure.
Here is a magnificent early example of the complete Urushiye, which fairly holds its own beside the painting last described. The black is still used in broad masses, but the background is now filled in with rude stage details of architecture and garden. Upon the panels of the sliding door yellows and browns have been sprinkled ad libihim in a manner most unnatural, yet contributing to the warmth of the total effect.
35. KiYONOBU About 1730.
Painting on a large screen of two panels.
Groups of actors, large size. During the run of each piece at the new theatre it became the custom to hang on the facade large paintings of the chief incidents of the play, as we hang theatrical posters in conspicuous places. After the close of the season they became for the most part lost or destroyed. The execution of these posters, or Kamban, falling originally to the lot of Kiyonobu, a monopoly of the business has remained ever since in the Torii family. These painted posters of the last century have now become extremely rare, and are far finer than those of recent days. They exhibit to us in large scale, and with the fiill force of the pen strokes, the very groupings which were reduced for the handbills and the single sheet prints.
It is quite clear that these two panels, though afterwards mounted on a screen, were two out of a single series of these Kamban. More- over, they are the most splendid and finished in drawing and coloring of any I have seen, with the exception of one by Kiyonaga, now at Boston. The lavish use of gold is a striking feature. It is noticeable that prints of large size seem to belong to the early years of the cen- tury. As the actor print monopolized attention, a small size seems to have been fixed for it. In such paintings as this alone can we trace Kiyonobu's larger style in middle life which would correspond to the ink prints of ladies in his earlier. This gives us one of the richest passages of tone in the whole Torii school.
36. Masanobu About 1730.
Painting on a kakemono.
Richly dressed girl and attendant.
This painting is specially interesting in three respects: First, it enables us to see what Masanobu' s larger style had become in the
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intei\'al ; second, it is almost on such paintings alone that we can rely for a study of Masanobu's work at all in his middle period ; third, it enables us to compare directly paintings by Masanobu and Kiyonobu of the same date. Masanobu's work in prints tends to concentrate at the middle and at the end of his career. He seems to have disdained serious competition with Kiyonobu and Kiyomasu in developing the actor print. Apparently he recognized that the delicacy of his style was better suited to the delineation of women ; and, since after 17 15 the demand for prints of such subjects seems for a time to have been eclipsed by demands for theatrical scenes, Masanobu devoted himself almost exclusively to painting, as a rival of Choshun. Many paintings of this middle period are met with, through which, and the print designs of his pupils, the changes in his style have chiefly to be traced.
In this picture a comparison of the patterns with the spottings on the Kiyonobu screen, and of the angular design on the black dress with that on the red in the Kiyonobu kakemono, shows strikingly the fashion of the day. The tail of the hair arrangement behind the head is being drawn out into a longish point.
37. Okumura Toshinobu. About 1730.
Hand-colored print.
A young girl. Of all Masanobu's pupils bearing his family name, Toshinobu is the best known and the most able. His hand-colored prints are much more frequently met with than his master's. They have much feminine grace and charm, and are usually striking in color. It is not known whether he was Masanobu's son ; but his work ceases before the latter's. Here we have a fine sample of an experiment which seems to have been inaugurated by him, to eschew reds, and confine his coloring to yellows and olives.
38. NiSHiMURA Shigenobu About 1732.
Hand-colored print.
Actor dressed as a gardener with flowers.
Here first appears another famous family name in Ukioye annals, Nishimura. Its work seems to combine the qualities of the Torii and the Okumura. At first in subject it follows the Torii in concerning itself with actors. Later it falls very much under the influence of Masanobu, and devotes itself to women. It is most convenient to reckon it a branch of Masanobu's sub-school, which more and more detaches itself from that of the Torii.
Shigenobu is probably the patriarch of the family. His work is comprised between 1720 and 1740. In painting he is coarse and uncouth ; but as a designer for prints he has great merit. He delights in representations of flowers and leaves. His importance in history rests partly upon his influence over his more famous son, Shigenaga.
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39- NiSHiMURA Mangosaburo About 1732.
Hand-colored print.
Actors in male and female parts. This print exhibits the early Nishimura style at its strongest. Man- gosaburo's relation to Shigenobu is doubtful ; but we may, perhaps, conclude from the fact that his work covers about the same period, and from his retention of the unprofessional name, that he may have been a younger brother. That he was the greater artist is clear. His name is not mentioned in the books ; but it may fairly be said of him that he was the strongest print designer then living, with the excep- tion of the two Torii. This is a splendid sample of his work ; strong and sweet in drawing, solid in composition, full of beautiful detail, and rich though quiet in color.
40. Nishimura Shigenaga About 1735.
Hand-colored print.
Young man and girl in a garden. This is one of the earliest works of a young man who was destined to play during the next thirty years a striking part in the history of Ukioye. Inheriting from his father in painting a rough waywardness in manner, the bent of his own genius evidently drew him to the sub- jects and proportions of Masanobu, of whom he became a close pupil. He is one of those interesting men, known to all schools of art, whose oddity would be denounced as clumsiness in other hands, but through some indescribable soul-endowment becomes endeared to connoisseurs for its earnest idiosyncrasy. We shall watch his rise to supreme mas- tership at a later epoch.
But in this careful work already a charm is evident, borrowed in part from the paintings of Masanobu, but new to the colored prints. It is not only that we have every-day subjects returning, in place of actors ; not merely from the innovating delightfnlness of the landscape hints. It lies not alone in the funny little innocent faces, nor in the ease of drawing and the unconventional posture and composition. It is the first appearance in Ukioye of that sweet, slender feeling of youth, that delicate suggestion of sentiment, which rise to perfection thirty years later in the designs of his great pupil, Horunobu. It strikes a new note ; the element of personality is in it.
41. Masanobu About 1735.
Small painting on a kakemono.
Young man and girl in a garden.
Here we see the pictorial source from which Shigenaga drew something of his inspiration. It is the same scene. It is the beginning of painted landscape in a purely Ukioye style, differentiated from that of Moronobu and Choshun. It demonstrates the growing power of Ma- sanobu, even in its excessive delicacy. He has cast himself free from
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early reminiscences, as from the coarsening influence of the Torii, and has determined to devote himself to purity and sweetness of feeUng in dealing with Japanese subjects. The outline strokes here, though fine, are pulsating with vitality and modulation. These are perhaps the most classically perfect figures which occur until we arrive at the genius of Kiyonaga. After long waiting Masanobu is learning how to distance his early rival, Kiyonobu. This is the most beautiful of his minute paintings.
42. KiYOMASU About 1735.
Hand-colored print.
Actors in male and female parts.
We have here a strong example of the Torii analogue of this date. The pale reds have faded ; but the coloring was always refined and quiet. It shows no falling oJBFin this artist's powers. There is still a splendid energy in the outlining. It is noticeable that the tail of the hair, carried out to a still sharper point, is about to be bent slightly upward at the tip.
43. TosHiNOBU About 1735.
Hand-colored print.
Girl with a puppet.
Here we have the Okumura analogue in print designing of the actor type. The head is larger and more round. There is an attempt to render the slight hint of a puffing of the hair high over the ears ; the first ripple of a new movement destined to achieve the most exagger- ated results. In short, the evolution of the fashionable female coififiire, for thirty years confined to modifications of the size and shape of the tail piece, is now about to try what it can do with the long neglected wings. It is noticeable here also that the use of a lacquered black is dropped. From now on this tends to be the case, although there are many exceptions. Another innovation seems to be that Toshinobu's beni red has been mixed with orange, and that blue is a prominent note.
Mangosabtjro About 1736.
Hand-colored print.
Actor with wigs, dancing. This print does not belie the reputation I have given Mangosaburo. It is as powerful in line as a Kiyomasu ; its color is as sweet and clear as an Okumura. It is so perfectly preserved that it shows almost the original tints.
KrsroMASu About 1737.
Hand-colored print.
Actor, male figure. This print is the fine Torii analogue of the last. The drapery is sumptuous in its sweep of long diverging curves. The lacquer is
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45
abolished, and the colors have little differentiation in dark and light. The setting of the architectural background and the disposition of the lettering are strong.
46. ZiYONOBTJ About 1738.
Hand-colored print.
Actor with fan and box.
This, though less splendid in line, is equally clear and fresh in the color. The old style of sprinkling with metal dust, probably a cheaper sort, which has turned to a coppery green, gives character to many of the prints of this day. The bands in the dress pattern, and the large, square crest are notable. Here in his actor prints Kiyonobu has taken Masanobu's hint by introducing some charming quaint land- scape suggestions.
47. KiYOMASU About 1738,
Hand-colored print.
Actors, in tragic scene.
This sample, perfectly preserved, is typical of the warmer scale of col- oring in the actor prints, into which black lacquer has been thrown again as a bass-note. The reds, yellows, browns and blues are exactly normal.
48. Masanobu About 1738.
Hand-colored print.
Street scene, a festival.
After thirty years of waiting, Masanobu now completely throws off the tyranny which has tended to narrow print-designing to stage subjects ; and, not only asserts himself as leader in the delineation of women, but, as in this instance, returns to subjects of crowded out-door life, such as he had once borrowed from Moronobu at the commencement of his career. It is strange that there should hardly have been a print of such subjects executed by anyone during the interval. Even in paintings they mostly disappeared after Choshun. But now toward the middle of the century, when the novelty of the theatre had passed, and the style of the Torii was developing no new features, interest again arose in the fulness of Yedo life ; and there was plainly an open- ing for Masanobu to cease sulking in his tent, and to reassert his power. It is noticeable, too, that during the interval there were almost no prints of large size, only the small narrow page for the albums of collectors. But now the new subjects would demand larger scope ; and thus between 1740 and 1750 suddenly spring into view splendid ample sheets swarming with figures, or filled, as in the early days of the century, with grand and dignified portraiture. It is strange that the work of a genius like Masanobu should thus con- centrate itself about the extreme poles of age, as the burdens of a
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Japanese porter weight down the ends of his shoulder rod. But the future of Ukioye was really bound up in this movement, and in the capacities of Masanobu's genius after he had reached something like the ripe age of seventy. It is now, and with him, too, that commences the beautiful series of small illustrated books, of which Harunobu's, Shigemasa's, and Kiyonaga's later become the highest types.
Here we have vigorous and picturesque setting, though somewhat clumsy drawing like Shigenaga's. We shall see Masanobu in a few years more shake himself free from this. The color tone is already dark and splendid.
49. KiYOTADA About 1739.
Large hand-colored print.
A crowded street scene in Yedo. The new movement was evidently not to be confined to Okumura Masanobu. In painting, Tsunemasa soon enters it, and in prints we have here the exceptional effort of a scion of the Torii house. It is of almost unique interest for its unstudied quaintness. Of many types and occupations, the groups seem quite to move about before one in their natural confusion. It was hard for this old actor draughtsman to render with full grace the hair arrangement. Already there is sign of a divergence between the traditional Torii drawing of coiffures, and of the more flexible pen of Okumura. The former tend to conserva- tism, to repeating the types of Kioho and Gumbun (1730 to 1740) ; while the latter vary with every delicate nuance in fashionable propor- tion.
50.
51-
KrvoMASTJ About 1740.
Hand-colored print.
Actor with lunbrella in female part.
This repeats the perfect preservation and coloring of No. 47. It is noticeable now that the tail-piece of the hair is growing shorter and blunter, and intentionally bent up at the tip.
KiYONOBTJ About 1741.
Hand-colored print.
Actor, male figure, with sword and fan,
Lent by Frederick W. Gookin of Chicago. This is a superb specimen of the very last stage of the Torii hand- colored actor prints. Yedo art, Ukioye, is on the verge of a revolu- tion, but does not know it. These large angular strokes of the brush, these rapidly blended passages of strange spotty color are to be seen for the last time. Though growing old, it is evident that Kiyonobu has not lost his power of design. The hair arrangement already shows that two-fold change in decided progression, the tail flattened and bent upward, the side pieces over the ears fuller ; and still a third
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52.
53'
change, the forehead knot detaching and coming into slight promi- nence again after an abolition of forty years.
Masanobxj About 1741.
Hand-colored print.
Female figure with paper. This is an interesting and most exceptional piece by Okumura on the eve of the great change. It is in the style and size of the Torii actor prints ; it borrows their last and richest scale of rose and yellow color- ing, even to the use of the almost discarded black lacquer. But in the grace of hue, and the distinguished arrangement of the odd masses, we now have something which challenges comparison in aesthetic feel- ing with the strongest work of his contemporaries. He is beginning to realize himself a great creator of design. We see here in beautiful detail what is meant by the small shell-like curve over the ear, the detachment of the top-knot, and the fine upward sweep of the long low tail.
Masanobu About 1742.
Very large hand-colored print.
Interior of a pleasure-house upon the river, with a party of young people. Here we begin to see Masanobu' s power of fine head drawing, and of beautiful grouping, such as appears in the finest of his illustrated books. The scene is utterly characteristic of Yedo hfe. The broad river which flows through the city is bordered for miles with such halls, opening also at the sides wherever a canal, like a cross-street, inter- sects. There is a refined sweetness about the group playing at the game which is new in Japanese art. The hair is flattening out behind still more in the form of a beaver's tail, whose construction we can the better examine in the profile figures. The fore-knot is rising into decided prominence. There is some suggestion of approach to the helmet shape of the total effect characteristic of Moronobu in 1690. Though a rapidly passing phase of fashion, it is surely one of the most beautiful forms of coiflfure ever devised in Japanese history. Oku- mura' s artistic use of it is the triumph of his art, rivalling as it does Hokusai's most careful head drawing of a century later.
54. Masanobu Probably 1743.
Print in two colors.
Young man with a lantern.
At last we have arrived at the turning point in the art of printing. It comes unheralded, but naturally, as do all great changes. What is involved in them cannot be seen till later. It is the change firom hand-coloring, to the application of color by impression firom flat wooden blocks. Why this change was so long deferred, we do not surely know. It seems almost certain that samples of Chinese block
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color printing must have been already imported. European critics have, without exception, made a great mistake in ascribing this change to the close of the seventeenth century. Block colored work by Kiyonobu is everywhere recently labelled of that date in exhibi- tions and collections. It is an error apparently borrowed from the uncritical conjectures of some English and French authorities. It was a most exciting chase of years, during my residence in Japan, to hunt down, narrowly encircle, and finally to capture this most impor- tant date. The difficulty was to dispose of the enormous mass of varied hand color-work, on the hypothesis of an early date. Little by little the approximation was driven forward into the heart of the eighteenth century. One clew was evidently the smaller patterns in dresses, frequently checks and plaids ; another was the rapid growth of the helmet-shaped hair-dressing. Illustrated books were sought and bought for dates ; but the fly-leaves had been mostly torn away from this ephemeral literature. At last that rare thing, a dated print appeared ; and then a collection of yearly advertise- ments of the actors' guilds, all dated, in which block coloring in the primitive rose and green suddenly found its place. It was soon evident, too, that the two methods of coloring overlapped by a few years, as was natural. The new method, at first experimen- tal, must have been quickly commended by its cheapness ; but could not at once drive out the more personal, as used on the larger and more expensive issues, the iditions de luxe, so to speak. Thus a limiting date was found on the later side, and the indications of the last cheap hand-colored prints determined it closely on the other. It is possible that the earliest experiment was made in 1742 ; but it has not been proved to be earlier than 1743. "Who conceived and started the experiment is not certain. Whoever it was, all the lead- ing print designers, Masanobu, Eliyonobu, Kiyomasu, and Shigenaga, jumped at its use immediately, and made it their own ; but it was Okumura Masanobu who from the first treated it with the most exquisite aud imaginative genius.
The technical possibilities latent in the new process were great. Heretofore line had been sacrificed to license in color-spotting. Now the limitation to two colors demanded the finest skill and crea- tive resource in the relative distribution of each. It was a decorative problem in simple terms, analogous to that of the painting on Greek vases; but which has never been worked out into as complex and splendid pictorial solutions by any European race. Hence its unique educational value for art students to-day, whose power over the be- wildering combinations of possible colors and masses can be normally guided only by thorough discipline in arrangement of the simplest flat values. The choice of pale rose and green as the colors was the most happy that could have been made. In the earliest specimens
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of all the artists both colors are largely diluted by white, that is, applied in relatively small pattern over the untinted ground. But Masanobu alone of all knew also how to darken his colors by admix- tures of black, which he superbly disposed throughout his design as an organic color. In the earliest specimens, too, some of the most deHcious effects were got by embossing ; and a choice of the red or green for a portion of the lettering gave tone to the effect. Doubtless the splendid results were aided by the new fashion for smallness of pattern; repeating leaf-forms, or vine traceries, and fret-work of diaper, plaid, or check. Thus the meagre resources of the tints could be enriched by the relative massing and interpenetration of these small units of area.
In the superb specimens by Masanobu, probably attributable to the first year of the new method, we see all these resources handled with incredible mastery. It was the discovery of a new world of beauty by a man almost on the verge of the grave. There is the lustiness and vitality of a youngster in it. The tones and textures are in- describably delicious. The true design of the drapery stands out with a combined strength and grace, a freedom of flow, and a beauty of proportion which render Okumura's figures in his last years " classic," so to speak, in the history of Ukioye.
55. Masanobu Probably 1743.
Print in two colors.
Lady embracing a young boy.
I<ent by Samuel Colman of New York. This, which appears to be one of a triptych with the preceding, is almost equally beautiful and rich. The half-pleased, half-reluctant yielding of the innocent boy is naively rendered in the clasped hands.
56. Masanobu About 1744.
I/arge hand-colored print.
Young gentleman on horseback. This work, though darkened by time, is rich, powerful, and charming in design ; and of special interest as showing the master's retention of personal color-handling in a large and expensive print. Here the strong design of the horse in red and black is quite Greek, and a fine use of plaid in the outer garment is again introduced. In the delicate pattern of the trowsers we see the sort of motive which Okumura had for utilization in printing his soft rose traceries. The heads of the ladies at the window bring out the sentiment of the composition.
57. Shigenaga Dated 1743.
Print in two colors.
Young man arriving in the rain. The sweetness of this work is almost worthy of Okumura himself: though in composition it is not so strong. It stamps Shigenaga an
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independent master of the possibilities of tlie new manner from the outset. Here the dilution of the exquisite tints by white is clever, and the introduction into the pattern of the black numerals, striking. Here, again, there is that indescribable flavor of personality in the figures which even Okumura's more perfect beauties possibly lack. Shigenaga differs from Masanobu in choosing the green for some of his lettering. His prints in two colors of any date are exceedingly rare, and this is almost a unique piece in that it is dated, and that date is the earliest which occurs on such work. Is it not suggested as a surmise that, as Harunobu still later celebrated the date of an equally important innovation by putting it on the new prints of his first year, so this rare fact of a date may indicate the moment and the pride of Shigenaga in his own discovery ?
58. Masanobu About 1744.
Print in two colors.
Young girl sitting pensive on her bed.
I/cnt by Charles J. Morse of Chicago. The combined beauty and sentiment of this clear print is indescriba- ble. There is an abandon of line, a tossing back of the great- sleeved coverlet, running parallel with the heart's emotion. She dreams of some one absent. The strange spots of the straight bounded blacks on the parti-colored night-robe, such as only Okumura can de- sign, add to the nigligi effect, while from the careless folds escape a sweetly drawn thin and girlish leg. The rendering of the ink painted screen in the background, a work of Kano Tanyu probably, lends strength and variety to the composition.
59. Masanobu About 1744.
Painting on a kakemono.
A Falconer.
Lent by George W. Vanderbilt of New York. It is of special interest to compare this pure painting from Masanobu' s own hand with his other splendid work in these last years. It shows how little was contributed to his grandeur, his classic purity, his matchless wealth of invention by the co-operation of younger pupils, or by the accidents of printing. He stands out a supreme master ; and when one studies his collected work, as this exhibition enables any one to do probably for the first time in history, it seems almost to reach the highest point of Ukioye art. The great Paris collectors have disputed for years whether Hokusai, Utamaro, or Kiyonaga ought to be awarded the palm ; a few have been overcome by the feminine charm of the semi-primitive Harunobu. But no one has yet done justice to the in- comparable grandeur and dignity of Okumura Masanobu. It is the highest compliment to pay to this wonderfully colored work to say that it exhibits Masanobu' s qualities of painting at their highest.
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6o. Masanobu About 1744.
Tall hand-colored print.
A Falconer. Nothing could be more interesting than to compare this noble print of the same subject with the painting that precedes. What dignity, what pose ! What wealth of diamond check in the robe's border, what simplicity of black striping in the skirt ! Note the sensitive drawing of the gloved hand, the careful harmony in the perfect lines of the hair. This is doubtless one of the most beautiful heads Oku- mura ever designed. Its grand oval receives an indescribable dignity from the exaggerated length of the nose, a liberty analogous to that which the great creators of the world have always dared to take. This is the most perfect sample of the helmet-shaped coiffure of the period Kuanen. The tail is now raised up from the neck in self- sustaining rigidity ; the swell over the ears has the vital curve of a breaking wave. What could be more exquisite than the plumage of the hawk?
61. KiYONOBU About 1746.
Print in two colors, uncut triptych. Standing figures with umbrellas.
But, by whomever discovered, this potent innovation did not leave the Torii cold. For his cheap actor prints Kiyonobu would be the first to see its commercial value. From its first year this veteran plunges into the new race for fame with the ardor of a schoolboy. And no less than Masanobu does he demonstrate capacity for creation . in the new terms. From the rude forms of thirty years' standing, with their riotous hand-tinting, he passes with absolute ease to the nicety of line and the purity of soft coloring demanded by the new conditions of design. And yet he is no mere translator of Masano- bu's thoughts. As from youth, his individuahty asserts itself It is not only a new actor ideal that asserts itself; but a new aesthetic ideal of the pink and green harmonies. From the first Kiyonobu seizes upon the clew of the small patterns coming into vogue. It is not the wealth of Masanobu's strange massing of resources that he emulates ; but it is the dignity involved in the simple repetition of minute designs over large spaces at which he aims.
There could not be a riper exemplification of his new ideal than this excessively rare specimen. We shall have to look in vain through Kiyonobu' s former work for anything so sweet and restrained in drawing. How he has enhanced the dignity by wrapping these stately male figures in the plain outer Chinese-derived double- breasted robe which falls to the heels ! How the unbroken vertical pose is accentuated by the handle, and capped by the dome of the
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umbrella ! How subtle the suggestion of feeling in slightly posed heads ! Yet all this is but a background for a new rhythm of dark and light, a new melody of color ; — stern checks of blue, black, and rose on the central figures, flower spottings like a shower of mingled petals and snow-flakes on the other. And what vitality and charm and support in the pale line-suggestions of the background trees ! There is so much that is fine, we hardly stop to notice the splendid crests. The rose of the coloring has faded ; " old rose " it is indeed now. It could hardly have looked finer with its wonderful fellow-tint of diaphanous blue.
But the last rarety of this otherwise perfect work is its almost unheard of state as an uncut triptych. We should not have known from the previous actor prints alone, nor from most of those which remain in the red and green, that they were generally cut three on one block, and triply signed for the possibility of separate use. Even in the case of the hand-colored prints this fact is proved by the blocks which remain. It is only from collections made at the date of issue that the uncut triptych occasionally turns up. This choice of blue instead of green by Kiyonobu is almost unique, previous to the experi- ments of Kiyomitsu. It is noticeable that in his actor types Kiyonobu does not closely follow changes of fashion in hair-dressing. This at first was one of the greatest obstacles to the determination of dates.
62. Akiyama Sadahartt About 1746.
Print in solid black.
Young girl under a maple tree.
Of this dehcious and unexpected work what shall be said ? Unex- pected it is because we have never heard of the artist before ; delicious because it combines all the personal charm of Shigenaga with the beauty of Masanobu. We do not hesitate to rank him at once as a pupil of Shigenaga, who, if he had continued to work, would have become more than a rival to Harunobu. The feeling of head and drapery is markedly like Shigenaga ; and the latter is known to have tried about this time experiments like this in solid black designing. But this is a triumph, wonderful beyond expression ; — the sweet pose like the droop of a lily, the swinging sleeves and skirt like the veined petals of some new night-blooming orchid. The exquisite maple foli- age is a realization of Aladdin's silver trees; while the poetical let- tering, not unworthy of comparison with twelfth century caligraphy, pours over her dainty head like a shower of liquid diamonds. May we not conjecture that, in this refinement of feeling, a classic taste far transcending the resources of Ukioyeshi, we see the work of some eccentric nobleman, whose position shielded him in his heretical effort to purify the style of his plebeian teacher ?
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63. Sadaharu About 1746.
Print in solid black.
Boy gazing at a blossoming plum. This piece, doubtless one of a triptych with, the preceding, differs from it only in the qualities of masculinity. The drawing of the plum-tree betokens familiarity with Kano models. The writing is a cascade of molten silver upon some planet where specific gravity is feather light. To isolate the lines of drapery they are encased in thin belts of white, which seem to bathe the figure in a sort of luminous aura, like the sub-aqueous gleams which play about Toko's swimming fish. The careless patterns and the folds of the tunbrella are fine niello work. There is no boy's face in the whole range of the art more innocent and sweet.
64. ISHIEAWA ToT?ONOBU AboUt 1 746.
Print in two colors, uncut triptych.
Young girls in out-door recreation. Here makes his first bow to us a young man destined to be a leader of the next generation, whose very name, Toyo, is prophetic to the student of Ukioye, and who from the first accepts gracefull}'- his heri- tage as Masanobu's accepted and most adequate successor. At first sight he seems to carve out his figures from solid emerald. But a second view reveals to us that they are gauzy, diaphanous textures of out-door summer robes ; through which as they fall across the lining of the collar and the coquettish petticoat shows the undertint of the latter' s red. This efiect is got in the printing by superposition, which thus composes a third or olive tint, a resource which, perhaps at first suggested by this representative problem, was sometimes utilized as an independent enrichment of the design. These early willowy girls of Toyonobu are among the most graceful of all his creation. We see the tail of the hair being pressed upward still more from the neck. Here again we have that rarety in a collection, a perfectly preserved specimen of an uncut triptych.
65. KiYOMASu About 1747.
Print in two colors.
Actors ; woman on plum-tree, and boy with a wrestler's fan.
What is more beautiful, even, than the design of this print, is the fine- ness of its printing ;— the delicacy of the traced patterns, the revelation of texture in their embossing. What a demonstration of the superiority of the almost superhumanly sensitive and sympathetic touch of a smooth block to the coarse drowning of the paper's fibre-tentacles with the soak of a soggy brush ! Instead of green the artist chose for us a fine citrine, about which the faded pinks cling like the perfume of a pressed flower.
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66. Masanobu About 1747.
Print in two colors ; uncut triptych. Groups of girls. We have seen Masanobu sweeping to power on the rising wave of natural human subject, and a new opportunity of design. We have seen Kiyonobu close behind him with his unexampled breadth of repeating pattern. We have seen how, in contradistinction, the former tends to mass his colors, his greens and his reds, his blacks and his whites, in strangely formed and well segregated passages. But never before has any one seen such a superbly rich, such a gracefully con- ceived, such an originally combined utilization of all the elements as in this matchless print. Each composition is of a large standing and a small crouching figure, thus weaving together two complete melodies of line theme. Each is as classically perfect as the drawing on a Greek vase. A single architectural composition for the first time unites the three groups, should the collector prefer them uncut ; the central one dominating by the presence of the tubs ; the one at the right crowned by the wall-decorations of the peonies. Secondly, we have in the groups, severally and as a whole, a consciously clear notan, or dark and light arrangement of the main spaces. This quality, which is mostly absent in Kiyonobu' s and Toyonobu's work, is here, in the midst of the most etherially deUcate toning, where we should least expect it, introduced with the finest modulations of volume, like the rise and fall of antiphonal rhapsodies between a clarinet and a French horn. This is managed, not only by the interjection of veins of black wealth, but by the clear enamels of transparent emerald. Here, again, the dominant black upon the central Sgure unifies, as notan, the total of the grouping. lyastly, in color orchestration we are simply amazed at Masanobu's resources in "working out." He plays football with his themes, tossing them about from instrument to in- strument, interweaving, inverting, accelerating, modulating, as does Brahms, the modem tone-magician. Green or red, it matters not, he dilutes them with a flooding of white light, he borders them with bands of black, star-lit like evening ;— he interlocks them in checks, he showers them in blooms of the weeping cherry, spurts them and chums them into the crests of combing waves, throws them at one another in shells as children romp joyously on a beach. The check- figures sway plastically with the surface- curves ; little vines clamber up, as on trellises, the lines of the folds. Finally, in a daring passage on the central figure, for one brief moment he blares out the red and green boldly in flat superposition, as Beethoven occasionally scales heaven with the lightning of a discord. Where else in the world shall we look for such finesse, for such fine prancing over the lists of pictorial problems. Even the facades of Greek temples were possibly cold and half-charged in comparison. Is it not the utmost wonder of
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its revelation that it enables us to say of it, that it carries the principle of classic design away over the border line where the Greeks with their architectural limitations dropped it ?
67. Masanobu About 1747.
Very large hand-colored print.
Young man with a letter.
Here is a grand specimen of the same master's work on another key. Refined in low-toned color, its structure is mainly in line and dark and light. The plaid of the outer garment is opposed to the vine of the inner, in form as in value ; and there is a startling accentuation with the strong crest on the curtain near the head. It is noticeable in this and in the preceding number that the tail in the hair-dressing is not only bent up very much at the back, but is lifted as a whole very high above the neck, firom which it is reached by a fine rising sweep of the carefully combed hair. This is the special temporary form that dominates the brief period Enkio.
68. ToYONOBU About 1747.
Tall hand-colored print.
Figure with an umbrella.
This shows well with what refinement, with what restraint without weakness, Toyonobu seconded his master's initiative. The vine pattern is especially beautiful.
69. KlYOMASTT About 1 746.
Print in two colors.
Figure in straw hat with musical instrument.
The red and green of each successive year is replete with new charm. The many degrees of the fading help the great diversity of effect we notice ; but there was much striving for nice variation of color from the outset. Here the rose color predominates ; and being applied more solidly than in previous specimens, it preserves a little better its origi- nal tone. The dominance of the design by the actor's crest above, in the midst of the voluminous lettering, is new ; as is also the use of the sweet rosette of the tea-blossom for a pattern.
70. Toyonobu About 1748.
I<arge hand-colored print.
Young girl with a written tablet.
Lent by Clarence Buckingham of Chicago. This impression is as clear as if printed to-day from a freshly cut block. It exhibits Toyonobu at his finest grace of style, at a point where he comes closest to the feeling of Masanobu. How deftly the soft dove colors mediate the extremes of the blacks and yellows !
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71. Masanobu About 1749.
Very tall hand-colored print.
Figure of a woman closely wrapped.
If, just before he died, Masanobu could not have given us this revela- tion of his utmost power, we should not know the man. We have been watching his gradual growth for fifty years. We have seen him, on the edge of the grave, if not inventing, at least creating a beauty in simple color-prints which transcends the world's design. It is fitting, that before the process of hand coloring altogether disap- pears, he should hold in reserve his last and grandest thought for its more personal expression.
In line composition the figure is the finest proportioned, the most solid, the firmest in pose, the most soberly complete in designing. It is one of " those ultimate things." Is it really extravagant to call it Michelangelesque ? No dress pattern in any age has dared to cut up its ground with such powerful organic spacings ; sleeve and skirt embroidered with a flotilla of Dutch ships, some, as the folds fall, tumbling over backward with sail and pennon set defiantly. Notan only increases the magnificence ; flag and canvas daring still greater difficulties with blade-like stripings of black, whose restless rhythms are drowned only by enormous belts of black in other breadths, and by the dark knots of the obi belted and dotted with light. Yet what would all this be without the color ? The breadths of the Dutch sails are alternations of black with rose and yellow and purple ; yet their extravagant sparkle, too, is lost in the broad oceans of color over which they play, sage green for the Hollander's atmosphere ; roses and reds and golden yellows folded closely about the throat, or escaping from the linings when the austere blacks will let them ; the superb Kuanen head crowned regally with a still more superb purple kerchief, whose loosely tied corner carves passage through the strata of collar and poem to the kaleidoscopic world of the ships on the sleeve, and whose vertical note is repeated below in the hang of a blue crepe sash flowing from arm to heel, like a strait firom sea to sea. Who could believe that such complexity is as natural, synthetic, and self-resolving as an organ prelude of Bach ; all aflSnities of this mighty reaction saturated and absorbed ; an illustration of William
Watson's couplet ;
" Often omateness
Goes with greatness." It is the power to handle Jove's lightning which proves sonship to the gods.
72. KiYONOBU About 1749.
Print in two colors.
Actors with bow and arrows.
Here the soft greens are of mysterious quality, melting into the
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ground of pale amethyst, as the green of a clear wave at the point where it breaks blended with foam. The reds, faded almost to ash, sift through them like a warmth of clean sand.
73. KiYONOBU About 1750.
Print in two colors.
Actors with puppet show.
Lent by Charles J. Morse of Chicago.
This might be called "a symphony in checks." Curtain, costume,
and panelled door contribute each its quota. It is an extreme case,
finely handled, of Kiyonobu's special problems.
74. KiYOMASu About 1750.
Print in two colors.
Boy on a bridge with boxes.
I<ent by Charles J. Morse of Chicago. The problem here is more like that of Masanobu. The blacks and greens are oddly massed, the notan clear, checks alternate with curves, and the fine bow of the fan-shaped boxes reflects the arch of the draw-bridge.
75. TovoNOBu About 1750.
I^arge print in colors.
Street scene with interior background.
It was but a step firom Masanobu's uniting the separate groups of a triptych by a common architectural background, to the conception of a single composition upon the same scale. Here Toyonobu has himself entered the fascinating world of the checks, and given us a striking revelation of its beauties. He has massed his blacks well, too, to avoid notan confusion. It is incredible that so much sparkle and tone can be given by two flat blocks charged with rose and green. What a limit to our art students, impoverished with all the resources of the modern palette ! This sheet is like an enlarged illumination of one of Toyonobu' s charming illustrated books of this date. The tail of the hair, having reached its greatest height, is now being depressed a little toward the neck.
76. Toyonobu About 1751.
Ivarge print in two colors.
Two young men with straw hats.
lycnt by Frederick W. Gookin of Chicago. In these years Toyonobu is becoming very prolific, and rapidly demon- strating his right to assume the heirship to Okumura. This pair is among the most graceful and beautiful of his figure compositions. The figures are still tall, their garments have the Masanobu sweep, the rose and the green are most deliciously balanced both in cutting and in massing, and the notan is concentrated by the clear blacks of the breast-aprons.
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77- Masanobu About 1751.
Print in two colors.
Young man playing a flute.
This work, though less important than the two of Masanobu last de- scribed, is nevertheless full of distinction and of fresh innovation. How charmingly the boy advances, intent upon his music, to be wafted to ' some sweetheart behind the fence ! Here is a fine new pattern in the sheaves of the ripening rice. The black-lozenge check of the girdle is barely seen against the dark green of its ground. How charmingly the alert asters peep, as the sympathetic willow droops to touch ! In the selection of this strong solid red and green, Masanobu has done a new thing, inaugurating a style of color which soon everyone will be adopting. We may well sigh for the soft hatchings with white of earlier years ; yet the full problem of color-printing could not have been solved except upon the basis of designing in solid tones. This is our friend's last appearance. In this year or the next he dies, aged about eighty. The impulse which he had given to the art could not be lost. He had set the standard high. For the moment he seemed to leave no successor of equal genius. He stands alone like an island out of the broad sea of the ' ' primitives ' ' !
78. ToYONOBu About 1752.
Print in two colors.
Arranging a man's hair.
lycnt by Frederick W. Gookin of Chicago. How insensibly we pass from age to age, how little reckon for the moment of the life and power that are forever gone out ! Toyonobu keeps on designing as if nothing had happened. And indeed the veterans Kiyonobu and Kiyomasu are still in the field, as living Unks to bind the new age to the old.
Here Toyonobu successfully attempts a new kind of line feeling ! Its keys are the double triangle of the crests, and the barred circular window crossed by a plum branch without. Narrow panes of the sliding door give us a new check. In the similarly proportioned panel on the right it is sympathetic both with crests and the rectangu- lar barrings.
79. ToYONOBXJ About 1752.
Print in two colors.
Young man at an entrance.
Toyonobu's genius is here at its most graceful. Nothing could more completely soften the checks of two sizes than the undulating lines of the white herons, in flight over silky plains of pink and of green showered with plum blossoms. The screens in the background give us close composition. The hair arrangement has now fallen lower,
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approximating the typical Horeitei form, whicli after this does not change materially for a dozen years.
80. Shigenaga About 1752.
Print in two colors. Uncut triptych.
Young people and music.
It is difficult to enumerate the wonderful qualities of this print. It is an uncut triptych ; it is in such absolute preservation. It is by Shigenaga, whose works are choice and rare among masterpieces. It is one of the ripest examples of red and green designing, at the apex of the art. It is a triumph of mosaic in small patterns, all the more wonderful in that it has no strong accents of black. The colors are massed, as the case may be, or cut up by every known resource of spotting, lining, veining, or checking. Solid reds come against reds saturated with white ; the central unifying passage is a constant play of green against green. Here is solution of endless primary decorative problems of disposition. The figures of the lovers in pairs, too, are exceptionally charming, the blending of the two kindred moods of love and music. On one dress the moon-rabbit leaps over rippUng waves ; on another, red and green herons look out over the sea in serried ranks. In short, the design is a little world of its own, to be explored at leisure. Upon this piece, as much as any, rests Shigenaga's claim to headship of a school.
81. KiYONOBU About 1753.
Print in two colors.
Actor, surrounded by jars, fighting with a hydra-headed dragon.
The old Torii veteran still gives us striking drawing and composition, and a new disposition of the blacks and yellows, which makes us think of tortoise-shell.
82. KiYONOBU About 1753.
Print in two colors.
Actors, girl leading figure on horseback. What a difierence from the last in tone ! Here is a spring-like scale of coloring in rose, ash, and black. One still marks the tortoise-shell efiect upon the horse.
83. Torii Kiyomitsu About 1753.
Print in two colors.
Actor selling boxes. Kiyomitsu, the third in the official list of the Torii line, and one of the destined leaders of the future, now appears for the first time. If either the aged Kiyonobu or Kiyomasu were his father, it is strange that none of his work should have remained of a date much earlier than 1750. I have never seen a single piece of his hand-colored work. He may have been a son adopted by one of them late in life. But what-
32
ever his relationship, he is as clearly in training for the successor as was Toyonobu in the School of Okumura ; and from the first he shows himself worthy of his name, as a painstaking and prolific workman, and as an original designer.
The pose here shows very decided vigor, an infusion of new blood into Kiyonobu's somewhat enfeebled actor forms. The obsolescent check appears again in the underskirt. There is broad treatment of the dark greens and blacks. Elsewhere the patterns show change to a repetition of rather trivial forms, which is characteristic of the new Horeiki design.
84. KiYONOBU About 1754.
Print in two colors.
Actors, young boy and girl. This is one of the most beautiful specimens of the aged Kiyonobu's work during the period Horeiki, after the death of Masanobu. The lines have something of the old characteristic Torii sweep, of its best hand-colored period during Kioho, about 1720. The ground of the dresses is a delicious solid rose, upon parts of which are thrown sparsely patterns in soft green and embossed white. The color and state of this print are exceptionally fine, the embossing being specially delightful and fresh.
55. ToRH KiYOHiRO About 1754.
Print in two colors.
Actor as a seller of vegetables. That there should have been still another scion of the Torii house, whose work, like that of Kiyomitsu's, never appears before 1750, is doubly extraordinary. They would seem to be almost necessarily grandsons of one of the two older men ; sons — who knows ? — of Kiyo- tada, whose work has long since disappeared. However it be, Kiyo- hiro is an artist of almost equal ability with Kiyomitsu. It is a question whether his works are not even more genial. At any rate, between 1750 and 1765 he follows Kiyomitsu like his shadow, even as Kiyomasu had followed Kiyonobu from 1700 to 1755.
This is a fine, clear work of his, especially in the blacks and greens of his oddly compressed chrysanthemum pattern. The pine and bamboo preside harmoniously, like a well-trained couple, in the backgrotmd.
56. KreoMASU About 1754.
Print in two colors.
Figure issuing from mouth of actor, like a spirit. This very late work of Kiyomasu is original and beautiful in color. The green has become an olive, the rose a pale claret. The woman still wears an odi with checks.
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87- KiYONOBU About 1755-
Print in two colors.
Actors. Woman helping a man into his outer garment.
Here is another original combination in almost solid coloring. The green has become a dark warm citrine, which throws up the heavy reds into fine orange vermilion, against which the blacks also are richly massed.
With this piece we come to the end of the work of these grand old Torii patriarchs. Whether it was in this year, or the next, that Kiyonobu passed away, and for what short period Kiyomasu survived him, is not certainly known. Certainly the contemporary longevity of these two men and of Masanobu, devoted to solid work for more than half a century, is one of the most interesting phenomena in art history. They witnessed great and most important changes. I<eaders were they in all the innovations ; the large-sized ink ladies of Hoyei, the tanye of Shotoku, the hand-colored work of Kioho, and, last and most important, the prints in two colors from Kuampo to Horeiki. The prolonged prestige of their art so rooted it in popular estimation that there was no possible course for it after their death but healthy growth.
88. ToYONOBU About 1756.
Painting on a kakemono. A belle, and two attendant girls. l,et us now pause for an instant and review the situation. We have studied minutely the Ukioye of the first half of the eighteenth century. We have seen it to be woven of two strands : the pictorial work of the School of Choshun, and the printed work of the Yedo triumvirate. This latter line itself breaks gradually into two parallel movements : one Masanobu's, whose printed subjects approximate to the painted ones of Choshun' s followers ; the other Kiyonobu's, whose work tends^ to concentrate in the direction of actor drawing.
What then was the state of Ukioye art, when about 1756 all the original leaders of these diversified movements were dead? Upon whom had the mantle fallen to be transmitted in turn to the geniuses of a later age ? There was still the double-strand : the pictorial line of Choshun still represented by Shunsui and Tsunemasa ; the group of the print designers still represented in its twofold subdivision of Torii and Okumura. Of the Torii we have now Kiyomitsu as the acknowledged head, with Kiyohiro a close second. Of the Okumura the name has disappeared ; and the rich inheritance from Masanobu is divided between Ishikawa Toyonobu and Nishimura Shigenaga. Thus stands the case down to 1765 ; and in the transition period of the next ten years we have to consider the four men above mentioned as the great masters of print designs. It is now time for us to see what they were able of their unaided genius to efiect.
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This example of a painting from the hand of Toyonobu is a great rarity. I have seen but two others. Here we see the small patterns of Horeiki in conscientious pen-execution. Blue can be freely added to diversify the red and olive.
89. Toyonobu About 1756,
I<arge print in two colors.
Two large figures of actors. Here is a perfect sample of Toyonobu's solid dress-designing in red and green. With the death of Kiyonobu perhaps he felt called upon to help Kiyomitsu out in his chosen subjects. In fact, from now onward there is a good deal of interchange between the two branch schools in this respect. This print is a proof. Blacks and pinks and soft olives actually glow between the sharp demarcations of their perfect lines.
90. Toyonobu About 1756.
Ivarge hand-colored print.
Group of boy, girl, and child. But here, in Toyonobu's work, we strike what has become an anomaly in recent years, a hand-colored print. From head-dress and style there can be no doubt of the late date. Probably he felt that he must not let Masanobu's practice lapse. And there is indication that this was to be an exceptional, careftil, and expensive piece in the wonder- fully "watered" background. This, printed in pearl gray, has already demanded a second block for itself ; there is no other resource but to add by hand the requisite wealth of coloring.
How prophetic of Harunobu this treatment of the subject, romantic love of the very young ! The boy and girl have been practising music together, like the groups in Shigenaga's triptych. Carried away by emotion, they have thrown down book, ivory lute-striker, and pipe-case, and, regardless of the astonished child, she has risen to entice him, only half-resisting to some more secluded bower. How graceful the lines of her drapery, as she sways in the very moment of unrestraint with a sort of languid, feminine delicacy ! How fine the action of the child. This is indeed a Harunobu in the style of a decade earlier than the Harunobu we know.
91.
Toyonobu About 1756.
Large hand-colored print.
Girl leading boy on horseback. This piece, evidently one of the same set with the preceding, is even more brilliant in color. The clouding of the gray background is won- derful ; while the blue and the claret strike new notes. Probably the edition of this perfect printing was very limited. I have not seen anything like it before.
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92. KiYOMiTStr About 1757.
Print in two colors
Girl who carries sea-water for the manufacture of salt, as seen in a
famous No dance and play.
Kiyomitsu now appears as Torii master in his own right, with quali- ties characteristic of his well-known future manner ; small heads and features, and great formal grace in long-sleeved, close-skirted drapery. Here still we find him working in two colors, but solidly and broadly designed, with little pattern.
93. ZiYOHiRO About 1758.
Print in two colors, uncut triptych.
Three girls, with tree and bird backgrounds.
Here the firee flower and feather patterns are new. Especially beauti- ful is the large camelia embroidery, on the right. An exceedingly rare and beautiful specimen of Kiyohiro's earlier manner.
94. Tanaka Masunobu About 1754.
Print in two colors.
Actor.
But the four men we have designated as leaders of the transition were not the only workers in this age. There was a host of pupils, many of whom are now forgotten. Several are well known designers of power. One of these is Masunobu. He was evidently a pupil of Kiyonobu. This is evidently a print earlier than the last, but his work is met with later in Horeiki.
95. Yamamoto Yoshinobu About 1758.
Print in two colors.
Girl, just risen, at her toilet. This is a work of real genius, naive and odd like Shigenaga, of whom this Yoshinobu was probably a pupil. It is an early appearance of the nude in Ukioye art. The greens are broadly treated ; the flower and bird design on the screen is as classic as ancient Kano. It is not cer- tain that this artist is the same as the one who afterward calls himself Komai Yoshinobu ; but one strongly suspects it.
96. Suzuki Harunobu About 1758.
I/arge print in two colors.
Two actors as warriors fighting. Another of the fledglings in Shigenaga' s nest ! Already illustrated books have appeared by him for several years, rivalling in delicate treatment of youth even Toyonobu's. His single sheet prints in red and green alone are rare. No one apparently suspected at this date that he was the coming man. Yet even here we see manifested a power over line which strongly recalls that of Kiyomasu in the early century, and a wild unexpected massing of the blacks to which no one
36
except Masanobu has heretofore treated us. It is most interesting to contrast its vigor with the almost eflFeminacy of Horunobu's later and better known work ; though, as we shall see, Uke Masanobu again, just before his death he rises to a supreme power in which delicacy and force are equal factors.
97. Shigenaga About 1759.
Ivarge print in three colors.
Interior of a large hall.
But now, what are our new friends going to do ? Merely perpetuate a tradition of red and green designing ? One wonders, but rejoices that they have stinted themselves so long. Their well-grounded mastery over simple resource is solid bed-rock on which to build. It may be supposed that such experiment of Toyonobu's, as in Number 91, reveals restless desire for more room, suggests the possibility of a third color block. Who started this innovation is again not certainly known, though with some show of probability it has been ascribed to Shigenaga, Its date, too, is uncertain, but it can hardly have been earlier than 1758. Head-dress and pattern changed so little during Horeiki that proofs are vague. But there seems reason to think the first new color block tried was a yellow, and that this proof of Shigenaga's exhibits one of the earliest attempts. Red, green, and black are combined as before ; but where some of the whites formerly would have fallen, we now find clear yellows. The perfect harmony we have known so long is evidently disturbed. The third color gives a garish look, though the dark and light is well managed. It will take some years of varied experiment wholly to absorb it ; but in the course of this we shall find some charming efiects of transition.
98. Harunobu About 1760.
Tall print in three colors.
Shoki delivering a letter to a girl by one of his pet imps. We have seen the tall print, as exemplified in Masanobu, gradually narrowing until it assumes the present proportion, which remains sub- stantially the shape of the tall print, or kakemonoye, for the next thirty years. There is reason for its extensive use ; it could be mounted cheaply with a narrow border of paper, as a kakemono with silk, and hung against the square modern pillar of an inn or a pleasure-house. Were it not for the signature we should judge this work to be a charming specimen of Shigenaga. Apart from the humor of the subject, the drawing of the girl is sweetly original and naive. But what we have here to note is, first, the introduction of the clear yellow only in small designs against the red ; but, secondly, that the third primary, blue, has been substituted for green, and that both green and purple are produced in parts by superposition of two pairs of primaries. This is a special device of Harunobu's ; and it is significant in that it
37
points to a correct conception of saturated harmony, and the use of the secondary olive green as a relatively neutral tint for rocks.
99. KiYOMiTsu About 1760.
Kakemonoye in three colors.
Mother and small child. Yet for the moment more immediately satisfactory results were got by more frankly simple treatment. Kiyomitsu at once declares him- self a leader by the series of widely varied groups of three colors which he tries from year to year. The most common at first is the selection of a bluish gray in addition to the primitive red and green. In this piece we have a lovely example. The blue gray is the prevailing ground, and against it the green and the red are embroidered. The effect in the sash where the green is sparingly used with black to out- line equal checks of red and gray is very beautiful. There is worth noting a less formal charm in this work where Kiyomitsu gives us as much of the sweet human feeling as Harunobu. The breast of the mother about to nurse is charmingly drawn.
100. Kiyomitsu. About 1761.
Large print in three colors.
The No dance of the bell.
Here we see Kiyomitsu in his most beautiful manifestation. The third tone is olive gray, and the greens and reds are low and cool. The line is Kiyomitsu's finest, with more dash than Toyonobu's, with the perfect grace of Harunobu's later work, and caring more for simple oppositions of mass than for the embroidery of patterns. There is hardly a finer composition in all Ukioye.
Id. ToYONOBu About 1 761.
Kakemonoye in three colors.
Young nobleman with a football. Toyonobu, too, tries the olive gray, against the faded red, and the one enamel-like mass of transparent blue green ; it is very delicate.
102. Kiyomitsu About 1762.
Kakemonoye in three colors.
Tall girl reading a letter. But, after all, Eliyomitsu remains for the moment without question master of the field. Between 1760 and 1765 his works are more numerous than those of all his rivals put together. What could be more classically pure in sweep, and more sparkUng in color, than this perfect print? "Elegant" is the true word for it. There is still a cool blue gray, over which in small passages the red has been printed for a quiet purple, and these four tones are most wonderfully harmo- nized with the strong glossy blacks of the obi. No design in two colors could be more satisfactory.
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J
103. KiYOHiRO About 1762.
Large print in three colors.
Actor dancing.
This is a very rich print with olive gray for a solvent. New effects are made by combining this with white and black directly, or with white and red.
104. KrsroMi'rsTJ About 1762.
Large print in three colors.
Actor, male subject, dancing.
Yet Kiyohiro cannot more than hold the pace set by his senior Kiyo- mitsu. It seems as if the latter grew finer at every moment. This piece uses the olive gray with almost unrivalled vigor. The figure is in strong motion ; black plays only a subordinate role, and yet the efiect is as solidly intense as it is beautifiil. Whites hardly enter into the pattern at all. The harmony arises from the two shades of green.
105. KiYOMiTsu About 1763.
Large print in three colors.
Girl opening an umbrella. But Kiyomitsu has yet other resources. Here he bleaches the thin dent red out into pale orange by throwing up against it a thick new ochrish red, which now takes the role of chief dark. Against this, too, the superposition of the blue gray over the ient hardly gives purple, as heretofore, but veritably a neutral olive. Kiyomitsu is finding out that colors are whatever their juxtaposition makes them, and that there is endless room for variation. This is a splended com- position, the new red holding grandly against the background.
106. Kiyomitsu About 1763.
Print in three colors.
Actor. Here the new red is used as pattern against the gray as a ground. One can hardly recognize his old friend bem in the spots of what appear warm orange. Here is actor-drawing as vigorous as of old Kiyomasu's. 307. Kiyomitsu About 1763.
Print in three colors.
Actors ; at the fish-hook shop.
Lent by Samuel Colman of New York. Here are the same colors as in the last, only the new red has been im- pressed with the lightest of touches, while the 6em has been applied as thick as possible. The result is something like a companionship between two shades of brick-red. The great feature, however, is the broad differentiation of the two figures ; the standing female mostly in gray into which black weaves a new harmony, the kneeling boy in an original triple check of red, gray, and mingled bem and white.
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Not content witli his two reds, Ziyomitsu lias concocted a still darker one for the anvil where he superposes the new one over the gray. The whole effect is soberly beautiful. io8. ToYONOBU. About 1763.
Print in three colors.
Young girl with an open umbrella.
Gracefiolly does Toyonobu make use of Kiyomitsu's color discovery. The new red, a little less heavy than before, is used for the body of the dress, while the blue is used in mass only on the light umbrella. On the costume itself, the blue, the orange beni, and white are spotted almost equally here and there in small pattern, producing beautiful and sparkling results. The figure is one of the most innocently girlish Toyonobu ever drew. 109. Harunobtt About 1763,
Kakemonoye in three colors.
Girl at a fair, showing off a monkey on a pole. This glorious proof print is indeed one of the rarest and greatest triumphs of the transition period of Horeiki. We are glad it was done, for it shows us unique and supreme mastery in handling primary and secondary colors ; and we are glad Harunobu did it, because it reveals in a new phase the many-sidedness of his genius. The three- color blocks now are firankly for rich blue, a beni red as strong and rosy as it can be made, and a yellow, clear but not startling. The first point to notice is the equal balance, and magnificent interweaving of these three. Nothing approaching this effect has been seen since Masanobu's latest hand-color work. In the second place black and white are used in decided small accents to help diversify this trinity of ground- tones ; and third, the blue and yellow superposed for green, and the red and blue superposed for purple, cut up through the pat- tern in small fine blades, enriching wherever they go. Notice, too, that these secondary colors are used in the pattern realistically as well as decoratively ; this green is the succulent blade-Uke leaf, and the purple the fine blossom of Japan's native iris. Here, for the first time since Masanobu, purple comes out against the yellow as a positive rich color; and here in the kerchief on the head (also recallmg Masanobu) he has deepened it into plum by alternating it with bands of the blue. I^astly in the monkey the fine lines of the hair upon the ground give us a soft gray; and thus with three-color blocks Haru- nobu has created a grand composition in a mosaic of nine distinct tones. Who can doubt that the end of block limitation must be near ? Why should not a master who can diversify like this have as many blocks as the tones he desires? Superposition restricts both color intensity and range. We could almost wish for the sake of complete- ness that Harunobu had also superposed the yellow and red, making; the third secondary orange.
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no. KiYOMiTSu. About 1763.
Kakemonoye in three colors.
Young girl with hairpin.
Is it possible that Kiyomitsu now began to recognize he was face to face with a young and dangerous rival ? that he must invent new and more brilliant harmonies to hold the pace ? At least he follows Haru- nobu in the selection of a pure blue ; and in this example he uses every device known to him to variegate it tastefully. Never have his lines of drapery been more gloriously graceful ; never have small patterns and checks been more carefully and daintily disposed. The green modifies and darkens the blue, and against the two the pink comes out sunny like blossoms in open air. Yet there remains a jaunty sparkle and swing in Harunobu which even this most perfect of formal beauties can not quite rival. There is to be mortal struggle between the two men.
111. KtYOMiTSTJ. About 1764.
Ivarge print in three colors.
Actors, male and female parts.
Once more Kiyomitsu tries what can be done with his new earth red. He dilutes it with gray' until it becomes a soft snuff orange. The beni then he uses in the Hghtest possible tint, which comes out a sort of Naples yellow. The third color is as pure a neutral gray as can be found. Now how can these be grandly treated? Let solid black swing in long sweeps against the straw yellow ; throw the latter in cirrus clouds over a sky of fine gray in the projecting under-sleeve ; treat the male figure by contrast as a delicate niello of the two reds and black worked in fine lines over the gray. It is a superb concep- tion. It attains a greater conscious breadth than Harunobu has yet reached. Perhaps Kiyomitsu' s supremacy is still safe.
112. Kiyomitsu. About 1764.
Kakemonoye in three colors.
Man with umbrella and box. But one more step in breadth has Kiyomitsu to take, and that is to eschew pattern altogether, except upon the obi. It is grandly done ; the black spots of the head-gear and of the box are superb. Here is a work that for large feeling may rank almost side by side with the Kakemonoye that Horunobu will do later. It is high praise to say of it that, were it not signed, it might be possible to mistake it for a Harunobu.
113. ToRii KiYONAGA About 1764.
Print in three colors.
Actor, female figure.
" Why should we stop for this boy ? " " How gauch and crude he is ! " " Who is he ? " " Only a young pupil of Kiyomitsu." " It
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is rumored that he has adopted him as a son." Thus we may imagine a conversation of contemporary connoisseurs over this excessively rare work. ' ' Yet the blue in it is daring, ' ' Harunobu may have remarked ; then passed on, and thought no more about it. I<et us, too, pass on ; for he is only a small boy. We cannot possibly know from this that here stands the incipient genius who in twenty years more shall rule as acknowledged emperor over the whole nobility of Ukioye.
114. KiTAO Shigemasa About 1764.
Print in three colors.
Actor, male part. Another boy ? Yes, we have not heard of him before. But we shall later on. He has already a skilful hand. He is an accepted pupil of Shigenaga, from whom he has borrowed his professional name Shige. There is a fine breadth in his grays and yellows. It is quite possible that he may turn out a genius.
115. Harunobu About 1764.
Print in three colors.
Actor, part of female dancer. What is Harunobu trying to do ? No one can quite find out. He is experimenting possibly. Kiyomitsu is not afraid. See, Harunobu has relinquished rivalry along the line of breadth and grandeur. He is trying to be delicate and pure. This looks something like a Kiyomitsu.
But there is genius in its quiet efiect. The line is exceptionally fine. The rose is almost a cherry red against a cool green of equal value. The yellow enlivens, chiefly in small bits of the pattern, which in vine and fan-folded paper is genteel to a degree. There is purple by superposition, too ; but only on the head kerchief.
116. Shigemasa About 1765.
Print in three colors.
Actor, in dance with the bell. How closely Shigemasa presses behind Harunobu with new genius ! Yellow, and black, and grey-green here form together a new color chord. An exquisite rose tint enriches the rich mosaic.
117. Harunobu Dated 1765.
Color print.
Girl, as the Buddhist divinity Fugen, riding on a white elephant.
Lent by Samuel Colman of New York. Yes, Harunobu has been experimenting. The new art with which he astonishes the world makes of this year, 1765, a dividing line between the two halves of Ukioye. So proud is he of it that he stamps the date upon some of his first prints in the new manner.
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I^ooking back we can now see that all before this date has been preparation. Looking forward we can see that all after it is fruition. The change was bound to come on the liberation of color printing's full possibilities ; but it is fortunate that its initiation fell to the lot of as subtle and daring a genius as Harunobu's. I<et us pause a moment and survey the conditions.
The first outbreak of Ukioye was devoted to painting, whose line had been perpetuated unbroken in the School of Choshun, a school still represented at this date by the veterans Shunsui and Tsunemasa, and the former's young pupil, Shunsho. At the century's commence- ment, single sheet printing burst forth in a powerful stream, whose two branches, that of Okumura, and that of the Torii, had flowed on side by side for fifty years. On the death of the founders, the heritage of the former had passed to Shigenaga and Toyonobu, of the latter to Ziyomitsu. All these leaders were still in the field at this date, but unprepared for the stroke which was to prove them for ever super- annuated. To them printing in outline to be colored by hand had been transmitted from their ancestors. Faithfully had they worked to aid the new cause of printing in green and red ; boldly had they sounded all the possibilities of printing in three colors. Yet exquisite and supremely aesthetic as their best designs were, they lacked much of the fulness of pictorial representation and beauty. They were mosaics spotted on a white ground. The ground had not itself become an organic factor in the picture.
The year 1765, therefore, cuts like a knife through the ranks of the Ukioyeshi. The older leaders practically cease to produce, being dis- tanced in the race. Shunsui ceases to paint, for a moment tries print- ing ; but immediately resigns in favor of his pupil Shunsho. Kiyomitsu still designs handbills and stage advertisements, and paints Kamban ; but when he occasionally prints in color, it is as a mere imitation of Harunobu. His adopted son Kiyonaga will still be for many years too immature to rival anybody. So the house of Torii for the moment undergoes a sort of eclipse. Toyonobu, likewise, ceases to be a regu- lar contributor ; though occasionally he follows meekly the new popular style. Too old, and too set in his ways to pace at the new rating, he practically relinquishes the headship of his line to his famous pupil Toyohani, a young man like Shigemasa, whose work we have not yet seen. I^astly, Shigenaga stops work, and it is probable that he does not long survive. His pupil Harunobu has distanced him, and everybody else, as inventor of a new art ; and he leaves the tradition of his school and name in the hands of his other great, but younger pupil, Shigemasa.
What a sudden change in personalities ! Who, then, are the new men, upon whom the future of Ukioye depends ? Pupils all of the time-honored schools, men, except Harunobu, with reputations yet to
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win, all bold innovators rejoicing in the consciousness of power, and the hope for fame. For the moment, all eyes are turned upon Haru- nobu ; but, looking forward over the next twenty years of mighty achievement, as we alien students are now able to do, we can see the four men, who wait at the threshold, become founders of as many dis- tinct and parallel family schools, four crowned heads of as many inde- pendent dukedoms warring for hegemony, the supreme masters of Ukioye's early and 'glorious summer. These four lords of the future are Suzuki Harunobu, Katsukawa Shunsho, Utagawa Toyoharu, and Kitao Shigemasa.
Harunobu, the fourth great figure in the history of Ukioye, successor of Matahei, Moronobu, and Masanobu, like the latter, did not discover his true power until late in his career. There is some reason to think that he had been working under Shigenaga since 1735. But nine- teen twentieths of all the work by which the world will recognize his greatness were still to be accomplished in the eight short years now to follow. When we judge from the next twenty-six numbers in this exhibition what wonders his unaided genius accomplished in that brief period, we feel that no words of praise can be too extravagant.
We have promised to exhibit the relation of Harunobu to the school of Shunsui. The new men cared little for the traditions of their teach- ers. They were ready to work in any line that opened. Harunobu perceived that Shunsui had kept his position pure, as "a Japanese artist," fi-om contamination with the vulgarities of the stage ; that he had realized something of the idyllic in Japanese life. He per- ceived, on the other hand, that the school of Okumura had fallen more and more under the Torii influence. In his rivalry with Kiyo- mitsu, he was doubtless prone to underrate the latter' s merits ; but he was led by all this to declare himself the true successor of the painters, in the department of printing. "Why must I degrade myself to the delineation of actors ? " he proudly asks ; " I am a Japanese painter, ' ' (Yamato-yeshi). From this declaration we may deduce his chief characteristics. He will be the painter of life, of youthful Ufe, of youthful love ; never before adequately treated in Oriental art. His prints shall be worthy substitutes for paintings, clear and refined in action, strong in presence, figures set in completely rendered surround- ings and bathed in real atmosphere, patterns on dresses subordinated to the masses they decorate. All this, perhaps, did not dawn upon him at once. The key to his first work is not so much the multi- plicity of his color blocks ; as his striving for atmosphere and back- groimd. Never before in Ukioye prints had the whole ground been tinted to represent sky, and earth, and sea. Never again in his career will Harunobu deign to do other than fill his whole picture with har- monious and expressive tints.
In this rare work, among the very first of his first experiments, we
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can mark the extent of the change by comparing it with number 115 of the preceding year. Here the figure fairly floats, like a vision, in the bath of soft gray atmosphere. The lines are left faint, the hair printed only as a thin film. Evidently what Harunobu is aiming at is texture. He has not yet learned how perfectly to smear the block for his tinted ground. We witness the stress of the attempt, how the color was laid unevenly upon the wood by a brush. Harunobu is already anxious about his papers ; it is a question of contact between two perfect surfaces, contact as delicate as the first touch of lovers' hands. Here he has apparently used five blocks ; and four of them, including the purple, are modifications of gray. The face, as always hereafter, will come out white against the ground. It is now a prob- lem of infinite and harmonious refinement in every branch of the art, fi-om design and material to the last loving pressure of the printer.
118. Harunobu 1765.
Color print.
Two girls reading a letter.
A few months later in the same year, perhaps, Harunobu has solved the problem of printing an even ground tiat. Against it he has designed in tones so thin that they have generally very much faded. Six blocks were here used apparently ; and one of them was for beni red. In the purple-cloud pattern upon the yellow dress we see Harunobu working with a new opaque mixed pigment. In the earlier years of Meiwa he tried every sort of opaque color mixture, as we shall see. Observe how microscopically perfect the hair-lines of feature on the little iimocent faces are cut. Where can more femininely beautiful drapery be found than in the kneeling figure ? Harunobu' s first note is the extreme of delicacy.
119. Harunobu ^^^(>.
Color print.
Young girl and servant walking in the street.
It seems as if the art could hardly achieve greater perfection. The gray ground is warmer, the architectural corner adds two more soft background tints. The willowy figures, unconsciously shy as flowers, are swathed in warm colors never before seen in Eastern art. Why should the servant's clothing be diversified by pattern ? What could be more chaste than a snow-covered willow for the design of her gen- tle mistress' robe? There are three quiet tints of warm olive, beside the striking orange citrine. Beni has been reserved for the finer pat- terns of the obi. Nine or ten blocks have been utilized here. It is a secret of the color-magician that the olive green of the lady's dress should carry at a distance as a chocolate red.
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120. Harunobu 1766.
Color print.
Woman and child at a temple lavatory. Here the tones are stronger, and solid black unifies. The dark choco- late trunks of the sacred cryptomeria, and the dead green of their foli- age, are samples of the new opaques, here throwing forward the light gray of the granite block. Harunobu in this year sometimes uses solid rose for his skies. There is no color-thought he dares not attempt to express.
121. Harxjnobu Late in 1766.
Color print.
A belle at the door, with two child attendants and a dog.
I/cnt by Clarence Buckingham of Chicago. In this wonderful print Harunobu about reaches the extreme possibil- ities of his experimental stage. There are foiirteen or fifteen distinct tones, lavished in a perfect shower of wealth on every part of the design. The background itself is a mosaic of light. But the most extraordinary thing is that they hold their place without undue confu- sion. This implies supreme mastery over two of the intrinsic dimen- sions of color, which are not always considered ; namely, the darkness and lightness of colors {notan), and the brilliancy and grayness of colors (seiutsu). He has now discovered how to use the very opaque- ness of tones over paper so as to give them transparency of effect. What could be more liquid or enamel-like than the cool blue of the hanging curtain ? How finely the yellow of the pillar cuts it ! Observe its texture, as painting ; the pigment, like spring frost, touching the hill- tops of the surface, but sparing the valleys. Thus is color physically diluted, as it cannot be in water-color wash, by letting the white %ht, held in solution by the paper's fibres, diffuse itself outward through the thin veil of the pigment. Need we wonder that the name nishi' kiye, or embroidery painting, was now bestowed upon this new art ?
Harunobu Probably early in 1767.
Color print.
Girl discovering bamboo shoot in the snow.
But Harunobu has satisfied himself at last with experiments. He has tried all materials, the most extravagant wealth of combinations. The problem now is to use these as wanted ; not as ends to be displayed for their own technical splendor, but as means to expression. Here is seen the largeness of Harunobu's soul. He deliberately returns for a moment to simpUcity of design, to the pure feeling for his subject. No matter if only seven blocks are used. In this very restraint of means shall lie the expression of perfect atmosphere, of out-door feel- ing. How beautifully the snow and the sky are rendered ; how soft and melting the total effect ! If we compare this with the fiiiest work of but three years ago, what a change !
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122
123- Harunobu Probably early in 1767.
Color print.
Girls catcbing minnows in a net. Here tbe out-door feeling and the tone are even a shade finer. The composition is supremely beautiful, though simple. The drawing of these slight innocent figures, wading with shortened skirts, is incom- parable in sweet sentiment. Here, as frequently elsewhere, Harunobu has borrowed, or adopted for color-filling, a delicate outline design from one of his earlier illustrated books. The water plants in the dis- tance are things almost as lovable as the children. Again, what could be more exquisite than the three tints of sky, earth, and water ? Against these the figures come out firmly in decidedly darker tones. These colors are hardly in the least faded. Here we have in all its flower-like freshness Harunobu's original color feeling. The print, too, is a proof. Mark the exquisite finish of the heads. There is no reason to assume anything like over significance in the absence of the artist's name. There was no ordinary practice in Japan of making "proofs before letters." Where names occur, they were ordinarily cut in the ink block from the first, as we shall afterwards see in the case of Kiyonaga. It is true that, in some of Harunobu's earliest work, he disdained signature. Who could mistake a Harunobu for the work of another hand ? And in these cases, it is true, that when, later in his career, or after his death, greedy publishers essayed to multiply cheap editions of his first works, for which a demand from the country had recently sprung up, they added for the uncritical masses a patent of the master's hand in a signature struck in where none had been before.
In design, preservation, and perfect beauty, this may be regarded as the typical masterpiece of Harunobu's earlier Meiwa career.
124. Harunobu Probably late in 1767.
Color print.
Child playing with fish in a dish. This print is notable for its deliberately broad treatment of quiet, opaque tints ; about eight in aU. Every color, even the beni, has been thickened with a slight body. We first meet on the dress of the central figure a frank blue, which, as frequently in Harunobu's early prints, has been the first to fade. How cool the whole scheme is to the eye ! How finely disposed the relative unbroken masses ! Is it pos- sible that Harunobu, like the great Masanobu, after mastering all the problems of delicacy, is now aiming at strength ?
125. Harunobu Probably late in 1767.
Kakemonoye.
Young girl with a broom in snow. This form, used sporadically since 1750, now becomes in the hands of
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Harunobu a key to some of his grandest compositions. Such tall narrow spaces are most difficult to handle. They stimulate what strength there is in a designer.
This is indeed one of Harunobu' s most beautiful out-door subjects. The finely preserved tones of the figure are still opaque, but solid and dark, bringing it out in most splendid relief against the natural gray of a wintry sky. The irregular patches of thick snowflakes in the air, the drifts piled upon the fence, and, above all, the crystalline spears of the frosty plum branches, compose the most perfect rendering of winter in Japanese prints. It is all pure and keen as a blast firom the slopes of Fujiyama. But there is also an unexpected grandeur in the color- note. The fence, silver-crowned, blazes with Kiyomitsu's mag- nificent opaque red, thrown now into claret by the absorbing mass of the neighboring olives. It is the daring note of a supreme colorist. If we shut it out for a moment with the hand, we see how relatively commonplace the rest of the design becomes. Yes, indeed, Harunobu is capable of passing into a phase of very great strength.
126. .Harunobu Probably 1768,
Kakemonoye.
Yotmg girl and attendant. This is one of the most perfectly preserved specimens of Harunobu's coloring I have ever seen. It is not so strong as the preceding, but wonderfully graceful. Such a use in large mass of pure ethereal flat blue has never been known before. Kvetywhere is perfection of tex- ture. Here we must now notice, too, the typical hair arrangement of Meiwa. From the first of Horeiki onward, the helmet-shaped form left by Masanobu had been preserved with little change other than a periodical lifting and depressing of the tail. Toward the latter part of Horeiki the shell-like projection over the ears had been tempo- rarily fiattened somewhat close again to the head. But since 1767 it has been decidedly lifted up and widened, until now it gives a wide, expanded look to the top of the head, like a bird in flight ; a sort of efiect absolutely new, never once hinted at in all the styles of coiffure from Matahei downward. This is a most beautiful example of the Harunobu head with whose character fashion had so much to do.
127. Harunobu 1768.
Color print.
Two little girls at a temple gate. This is one of the most fascinating, girlish, ripely original, and deli- cately flower-like of all Harunobu's designs. The faint outlines stand for little, and let the tones melt into the ground. The head kerchiefs are merely embossed whites. The patterns and the obis continue the band of stars begun by the cherries. How far away the landscape lies folded in strata of blue mist ! That temple roof in the distance is an
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island. The purple umbrella fairly floats in the air. The whole painting palpitates with the soft tremor of a spring atmosphere. This is perhaps Harunobu's supreme piece in the line of perfect sweetness. Pit}^ it is but a momentary note of perfect balance ; he will never try < it again.
128. Harunobu Probably 1768.
Color print.
Boy and girl fishing for fireflies at night.
But there are compensations. Here is a glorious example of a new manner which Harunobu from now on more frequently adopts. The colors look more transparent. They seem to play over one another like veils. In this case the new purple splendidly renders the gauzy sum- mer covering of the little girl's bare arms. The soft blue of the water is fading away into a yellow, as is its wont. The stronger blue of the boy's dress seems elusive. Every color seems about to fly away, or pass over into some other ; all but the great solemn sky of black, which throws out the rest of nature's twilight tones into mysterious glory. Here is a perfect fusion of delicacy in detail and power of total conception.
129. Hahunobu Probably 1769.
Color print.
The cock-fight.
I^ent by Clarence Buckingham of Chicago. In this beautiful piece Harunobu reasserts his tendency to design muck in beautifiil tones of green. The embossing on the print is superb. The birds are marvels of color printing. Here in the boy we have the transparent gauzy feeling. At this date Harunobu's figures tend to elongate, the heads to become an oval. Here on the verandah we notice for the first time the use of red lead, but in a quality different from that cheaper variety whose oxidizing has tarnished so many prints of Anyei.
Haktjnobu Probably 1769.
Kakemonoye.
TaU standing girl. Here we notice the new features, the elongation of face, the willowy- thinness of the body, the use of soft unbroken green, the delicate red lead upon the woodwork. Strong notes of black, too, tend to come in as accent. The toning is exceptionally delicate and pure.
Harunobu 1769-
Color print.
Boy leading girl on horseback.
Lent by Frederick W. Gookin of Chicago. In some respects this must be considered the central triumph of all Harunobu's out-door pictorial designs. The colors are again opaque ;
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130-
131-
they fill tlie wtiole space perfectly with natural expression. We may also say that this is the most beautiful colored landscape in Ukioye. At a distance the elements of the composition show as flat masses, defined by their color values, rather than by their outlines. It is the most perfect use of the tones discovered in some of the earlier experi- ments. As a composition it is great. Compare it with a Kiyomitsu of the early sixties, and see the gap Harunobu has spanned. In some sense, as we shall see later, this may even be called the central point of all Ukioye.
132. Harunobu Probably 1769.
Kakemonoye.
"Woman petting a little dog.
The beauty of this print lies in the fineness of the head, and in the perfect harmony of the soft dove tones, here largely diluted with white.
133. Harunobu Probably 1769.
Color print.
Girls at recreation.
lycnt by Howard Mansfield of New York. This print is noticeable for its very large dilution of the coloring with white. For the first time white itself is used as the solid ground- color of a garment. It marks a practice which grows more and more upon Harunobu.
134. Harunobu Probably 1770.
Kakemonoye.
Very tall girl coming firom her bath. This is charming, simple, and naive. There is still greater elongation of proportion in body and head during this year. It is doubtless a temporary craze, this love for tallness, for we find it in all the other designers of this day. It particularly changes the expression of the face by elongating the nose. The pattern of the bath-robe is strikingly used ; the morning-glories beautifully drawn and set. A richer red lead orange on the woodwork has become a prominent note.
136. Harunobu Probably 1770.
Color print.
Young man before two girls at a window.
Lent by Clarence Buckingham of Chicago. Mark here the long nose, the use of intense red lead ; also, what is strikingly new, the tendency to use solid black and white in opposing masses ; and the beauty of them here is enriched by a pale claret. But after all, the wonder of this print is its texture. Was there ever such delicious embossing as upon this white dress ?
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137- Harunobu Probably 1770.
Kakemonoye.
Graceful, tall girl tuning a samisen.
Ivcnt by Charles J. Morse of Chicago. This design is certainly one of Harunobu's later triumphs. We have spoken in the earlier days of Masanobu of a certain "classic " quality in the pure drapery. Here is Harunobu scaling a neighboring height. The pattern of flying storks and cloud is one of the most beautiftil in art. This is a typical head of 1770 to compare with Masanobu' s of 1750-
138. HARUNOBtr Probably 1770.
Color print.
I^ady at the entrance of a house. Here again is one of Harunobu's splendid creations, but now of his later mood. A great band of white wall dotted with painted pines runs across the back. The matted floor is the most magnificent example of Harunobu's later green, pure, delicious, emerald green. Against these two cuts the beautiful kneeling figure of a girl in solid black. Her obi is green lightened by white and pink. But the figure of the chief lady breaks against the green mats in a dress of Ha- runobu's darker beni claret. A small girl in plum purple brings a letter ; there is a curtain of plum blue behind at the right. The new types of face, so far firom seeming strange, appear wonderfully beauti- ftil.
139. Harunobu Probably 1771.
Kakemonoye.
Young gentleman with a football.
It would be hard to find a more ts^pically splendid figure of Ha- runobu's latest manner. Was there ever a soft green garment more exquisite, more exquisitely combined with broken reds and whites, like claret and foam ? How aristocratic the head ! A most perfect type it is of the male head at the end of Meiwa. How large the con- ception under the delicate coloring ! The slender fence-work of bamboo rods adds dignity and color beauty. I<ike Okumura Masa- nobu, Harunobu is rising at the very end into unparalleled power.
140. Harunobu Probably 1771,
Color print.
I,ady with chrysanthemums. Typical this figure is of the end. There is the Harunobu green in the ground. The figure is in a perfectly embossed white cr^pe robe with black trimmings. See now how widely the hair-wings at the side float high above the ear, carrying up with them the diminishing tail which now becomes a continuation of their substance.
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141 and 142. Harunobu Probably end of 1771.
A pair of Kakemonoye.
Tall man, and woman.
But Harunobu has still indeed a last surprise for us. Would any one realize the almost superhuman dignity that can lie in the exaggerated proportions of the day, let him study these prints. They are faded, to be sure, and the fading of the sparse reds and purples doubtless adds something to their mystery. Yet, like the fragments of a Greek god, the superlative breadth of their design shines through decay. It lies in the general disposition of the classic masses, more than all in the disposition of intense blacks against the dull cream of embossed crapes. With the very femlet on the lady's hem one's flesh creeps in loftiness of feeling. The tangle of notan masses at her hands is a pictorial idea so new, so strange, so noble, it belongs only where the gods sit. Yet the male figure is the greater. There is something unearthly about its line themes, orchestrated in black and ghost-tints, which lifts one to the infinities of Beethoven's purest melodies. The dreamy clarinet-player seems to droop and melt away into regions of sublimity where no earthly ear shall follow his dying chords. Thus indeed are we glad at the last to have Harunobu pass, transfigured, fi-om our vision.
143. KoRiusAi About 1770.
Kakemonoye.
Girl and a monkey. It is useless to conjecture what might have happened if Harunobu had lived. He was not an old man ; he had not reached the fulness of his powers. Could he, ten years later, have come face to face in rivalry with the maturing Kiyonaga, it is possible that XJkioye might have reached even greater heights than in fact it attained.
Harunobu left many pupils ; but only one, Haruhiro, better known as Koriusai, capable of taking up the master's banner, and carrying it on to new creative triumphs during the subsequent years. His work now we have rapidly to follow.
If Koriusai were not overshadowed by two giants, Harunobu and Kiyonaga, at either end of his career, his reputation might be that of XJkioye' s most beautiful designer. But in these days we get so accus- tomed to great work, that we hardly stop to rank it. In conception and drawing Koriusai is not as intense as Harunobu. But as a color- ist he is of the very first order. His tendency is to combine blue and orange in passages of great brilliancy. Moreover, he stands alone in one odd thing, some inborn power over the natural difficulties of de- signing for the narrow Kakemonoye. A series of Kakemonoye by him, as in this selection, is a veritable galaxy of splendor. His designs in this form outnumber those of all other artists put together,
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Here is an early work of his, contemporary with Harunobu's latest. The girlish figure is charming. Here already are his favorite blue and orange.
144. KoRiTJSAi About 1770.
Kakemonoye.
Girl with a straw hat. The delicacy of this coloring is remarkable ; quite unlike the black, green, and claret which distinguish Harvmobu at this date. It is clear that Koriusai was no mere imitator ; but overflowing with independ- ent conceptions.
145. Koriusai About 1771.
Kakemonoye.
Dancing girl, with a daimio's black hat.
This most brilliant print illustrates well all Koriusai's finest charac- teristics ; even to the clouding, and the rising sun of Japan.
146. Koriusai About 1772.
Small color print.
Boy and girl on a balcony.
Here remains all the charm of Harunobu's youthful lovers. Executed in the very year of the latter's death, this print in brilliancy of color is original with the new leader.
147. Koriusai About 1772.
Kakemonoye.
Two girls reading a letter. Yet, as if conscious of the new responsibility weighing upon him, he soon essays work in quieter, more dignified tones. Here a most deli- cious olive coquettes with his plum blue, while the roof and gnarled tree above supply the quiet reds. This is notable for another new thing, the composition in this narrow space of two equal figures. Harunobu, even in his strongest work, had confined himself to one, and that with- out background. This is a masterly triumph, though different from, yet not unworthy of the dead master. Notice now how the side wings of the hair, once started on the course of enlargement, are spreading far beyond any previous conceivable bounds. It is a new head, with this plateau-like expanse of hair at the top ; it is the head of the new period, Anyei, now beginning. The rapid development of this new line of evolution in coiffure is one of the most interesting phenomena in Ukioye history, and has influenced custom and fashion to this day.
148. Koriusai About 1773.
Kakemonoye.
Young girl with fan in gauze dress. Who can deny that this most exquisite work is in several senses an advance on all that precedes ? From the magnificent drawing of the
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nude parts, to the costume, a dream of textures and colors ; from the broken bamboo and back-lying hills, to the black chrysanthemum on the circular white fan ; — an elegance, and a harmony of the unex- pected ! This is one of Koriusai's finest early heads.
149. KoRiusAi About 1774.
Kakemonoye.
Boy leading a girl on horseback through water.
Here is another superb originality in two-figured composition. There is no blue. How fine the tint of the orange horse ! The girl droops hke a beautiful flower ; she feels the sentimental spell of the barred moon. How sweet and innocent the faces, in spite of their elongation, which is aesthetically necessary to balance the increasing width of the hair. The whole head itself is shaped like a lily, with a cup, and graceful pointed petals. It is the style of Anyei the third. It is the year, perhaps, of Koriusai's most charming style.
150. KoRiusAi About 1774.
Kakemonoye.
Girl admiring a hanging vine of morning-glories. Here perfection of conception, coloring, and printing seems to be reached. Womanhood and nature's flowers seem to grow together, in a common mood of innocence and sweetness.
151. KoRiusAi About 1775.
Kakemonoye.
Boy dropping a love-letter from a window. Here Koriusai's proportions have suddenly grown very long. But there is continuity of change in the hair. The lady's coifiure of Anyei the fourth has expanded its petals upon either side, until they hang over by their own weight in bell-shaped cups. At their edge, the marvellous unbroken wave of glossy black is seen to break, as if some new flower organ were about to grow. This brief transition state is very rare to observe. The tail is becoming smaller and rudi- mentary, as its substance is sucked up into the wings ; yet it still curls up, an organic part of the beauty, like the banner petal-leaves of an orchid.
152. KORIUSAI About 1775.
Small color print.
Boy and girl playing a game. The Koriusai orange now comes into great prominence. The new petal has budded over the ears, breaking the former broad expanse into two parallel locks. The wheel of fashion turns rapidly.
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154-
153- KoRiusAi About 1776.
Small color-print.
Gail}- dressed belle and attendants proceeding through the snow.
If not in charm, in richness of color, and in technical perfection, this little print about reaches Koriusai's high-water mark. It is all the finer in that the warm gray background is so light, and so much in- termixture of white plays through the color. The orange is now organicallj' used as a diversifier with the true tints of rose. How charmingly with the purple it breaks from the heavy snow upon the umbrella ! How firmly it holds its separate note upon the fox panel, which I suppose they are going to dedicate to some neighboring rustic shrine !
But mark now the sort of central form at which the extravagance of the hair evolution has paused. The new petal has poured down the sides, over the ears, like a cascade. It builds out the head with a solid block at either side, like the wings of an Egyptian symbol. Its lower line cuts horizontally across the top of the ear. The line of its top is a fine bow, as if a supple rod across the head had been bent down into a powerful spring.
KoRiusAi About 1776.
Kakemonoye.
Two girls under an umbrella.
This matchless print gives one a sensation of unearthly beauty, like Chopin's music. Where were blues and greens of the same soft value, more exquisitely blended, and harmonized by a resolution of filmy orange pinks and feathery whites ? Here is the perfect type of the year's head, showing the gauziness of the expanded hair, through which its back members may be seen. And note, now, that the little rudimentary tail, still visible in No. 153, has here completely disap- peared. This feature, which has played such a conspicuous part in the head silhouette since the days of Genroku, we have traced to the very moment of extinction, probably late in 1776.
KORIUSAI I^ate 1776 or early 1777.
I^arge color print.
A belle and two girl attendants.
I<ent by Charles J. Morse of Chicago. . Here in another way Koriusai reaches his richest, his most royal com- bination of grace and splendor.
There are three new things about this print. It is one of the earliest in a long series of portraits of noted Yoshiwara belles, which Koriusai now began to issue month by month, and continued until Kiyonaga snatched the work from his hand four years later. It is notable, too, for the use of its broad velvet black, a rare thing with Koriusai. This "black, too, is decorated in the most gorgeous way with the olive of a
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155-
tree in leaf, and the coral fireworks of its blooms. The obi is heavily- brilliant enough for a queen. But, oh, the little feathery green bamboo on the blue underskirt ! and the little orange trellis work with its silver vine over the purple of the girls ! and the texture ! And the grace of the three simultaneously opening petticoats ! Like all great art, it is a conception which stands alone, and for which words are useless.
155 A. KoRiuSAi About 1777^
Kakemonoye.
Tall belle, and two girl attendants. Here Koriusai has successfully introduced three figures with his ribbon- pattern of a composition. It is another triumph now of soft-toned color. All the dresses have patterns of green pine trees over fawn grays ; the little ones, of the young shooting pine, the lady, of the ma- ture tree with a snow-crown; — of blessings or of sorrows ? The storks that shotdd whirr through its branches have gone to sleep, wrapped up in the patterns on the obi. The hair, which in No. 154 had for a moment been pushed out to an extreme breadth of almost square box- shapes, has now, without losing its breadth, been pressed down a little at the comers, causing it to resume its bow-shape of the previous year, but with less tension in the spring. It is of rare interest to- mark here, with full opportunity, the arrangement of the back hair.
156. Koriusai I^ate 1777 or early 1778.
Kakemonoye.
Girl reading a letter. It was in this year, probably, that Koriusai became conscious of a serious rivalry with the rising Kiyonaga. The latter's work we shall not show till later, in a complete series ; but, when we reach it, we shaU look back, and compare its earlier efforts with these prints.
Koriusai here adopts a heavier, though still harmonious style of coloring. This dark chromium green is a new color in the art. The efiect of a black sky above cut by the orange lantern, and parted firom the ground below by a purely decorative zigzag, is very fine. The hair at the sides is about to elongate its bow ; and here we first notice Koriusai' s later tendency to draw his faces obUquely to the Una of the hair.
157. Koriusai About 1778.
Kakemonoye.
I/arge standing tea-house girl. Here, if we examine the strokes, we shall see evidences of consciously- imitating the more powerful and modulated sweeps of Kiyonaga's pen. The figure, too, is designed to rely entirely on its own dignity, eschew- ing all graces of embroidery or lace textures. It uses a fine low tone, enlivened with dull orange. The use of the perforated tea-tray for a bracelet is a charming touch. Here we see the typical head of Anyei
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7tli in the still more extreme spread, so to speak, of a perfectly bow- shaped wing.
158. KoRiusAi About 1779,
Kakemonoye.
House girl, and seller of mushrooms. A stress of rivalry with the young giant, Kiyonaga, is now quite marked. There is very decided improvement in the strength of the drawing ; a splendid antiphony of action. Kiyonaga's breadth of tone and simplicity of pattern are also suggested. The use of a more sombre ochrish-red instead of sunny orange adds to the dignity. If not the most charming, this is, perhaps, Koriusai's strongest work. The bow of the hair becomes, in this year, flabby, and much less deep.
159. KoRiusAi About 1779.
Large painting on a panel.
Is it a matron of dancers, walking with a lantern and a bundle ?
This rare specimen of painting is most important to explain to us the personal quality of Koriusai as draughtsman and as colorist. It is the largest work of his I have seen, and one of the most splendid. As Kiyonaga, during the next two years, rapidly forced him out of the sphere of print-designing, Koriusai more and more took up painting as a profession, which also he apparently dropped about 1782.
160. Koriusai About 1780.
Large color print.
Belle and attendants. This is another of Koriusai's portrait series before mentioned. It is a fine print ; and has charm in the leaf of the orange fish upon the waterfall of the obi. But if we compare his fi-equent mannerisms in this sort of work with Kiyonaga's ever firesh creations, we shall understand why the former was finally outflanked and driven from the field.
161. Koriusai About 1780.
Kakemonoye.
Lady and girl attendant. Koriusai soon finds there is but little use in trying to beat Kiyonaga on his own ground. The strides of the latter are so rapid and unex- pected that there is no keeping pace with him. What can he do but fall back, with less confidence, upon the resources of his own specific charm ? What he can do in these last days is worthy of him. In this piece we have still a new color harmony, an orange obi over a lilac dress, and under a claret outer robe. The dress of the girl passes from lilac into white crossed by bamboo sprays. The hair is now approach- ing another radical form. In this year the wings have become
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thinner, tlie tips raised, and the bow more flattened, returning to some- thing like the pointed shape of 1773 and 1774, but more spear-like. Mark now the rise of the back-knot over the top of the comb.
162. KoRiusAi About 1781.
Painting on a kakemono.
Large standing Yoshiwara girl.
But in this year Koriusai dropped printing altogether, and took to painting. His work is sometimes of great splendor. Here, though the drawing is forcefully angular, the coloring is a little hard. It is important to mark the new form of hairdress we have been approach- ing. It has become very long and pointed, like two fine blades ; the necessarily thin hairs are evenly distributed as a net across the bent strip of bamboo that gives them firmness ; the knot at the back of the head is growing more prominent, having its two ends now thrown up- ward into a double point. We have now traced to its last stage, the evolution of the normal Kiyonaga hairdressing of Temmei, as much a typical banner-sign of his aesthetic imperialism as the Old Guards' eagles were of Napoleon's military.
163. FujiNOBU About 1770.
Kakemonoye.
Boy at window.
Before going on to describe the other three schools of the day, let us first include specimens of a few of Harunobu's pupils and contempo- raries.
Fujinobu was evidently a pupil ; and this print is distinguished by its use of yellow.
164. KuNiNOBu About 1772.
Kakemonoye.
Boy and girl with lantern. Kuninobu was doubtless a pupil of Harunobu.
165. Haru About 1774.
Kakemonoye.
Group.
Notable for its extremely rich color.
166. Harushige. About 1775.
Painting on a kakemono.
Delicate and refined in feeling.
167. KoMAi YosHiNOBU About 1772.
Small color print.
Two actors in the ring of wrestlers. Yoshinobu, frequently working in the style of Harunobu, here takes his subject of actors from Shunsho. It is a perfect print, and ex- tremely beautiful in coloring.
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i68. ToRii KiYOTSUNE About 1771.
Small color print.
Actor riding on a cow.
Kiyotsune was a pupil of Kiyomitsu, and thus a fellow student of Kiyonaga. I^ike all the Torii of this day, he was influenced by Harunobu.
169. ISHIKAWA TOYONOBU. AboUt 1778.
Small color print.
Girls with gold-fish and turtle.
This Toyonobu is our old patriarch of Horeiki, the leader of one branch of Masanobu's school after the latter' s death. For the last twelve years his work has become very rare. This shows markedly the influ- ence of Koriusai. It is interesting to have the old veteran turn up once more just at the moment of our beginning to study the work of his famous pupil, Toyoharu.
170. ISHIKAWA TOYOMASA. AboUt 1771.
Small color print. The dolls' festival.
Toyomasa was probably the son of Toyonobu, natural or adopted.
His work follows closely the contemporary phases of Harunobu' s,
Shunsho's, Toyoharu's, and Shigemasa's.
171. Utagawa Toyonobu. About 1773.
Painting on a kakemono.
N6 dance of the salt-girls.
Lent by George W. Vanderbilt of New York. But the greatest pupils of the first Toyonobu were two brothers of the Utagawa family, a name destined to play a great part in the subse- quent history of Ukioye. Of these Utagawa Toyonobu was probably the elder and the greater genius. But he died very young, and his works have now become extremely scarce.
This painting is one of the most beautiful of his remaining works, the claret quaUty of the reds being something unprecedented in painting.
Utagawa Toyonobu • About 1773.
Kakemonoye.
Small figures with architectural background.
This is a most unusual specimen, careful and neat in its drawing and
disposition of quiet masses.
Utagawa Toyoharu About 1769.
Large color print.
Young girls practising music.
We now come to the work of the younger Utagawa Toyoharu, a man
who becomes the leader of one of the three remaining great schools,
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172.
173-
■which, through Meiwa and Anyei, run on parallel with the leading^ one of Harunobu-Koriusai.
Toyoharu's genius was a delicate and sensitive one, which shrank from competition ; and so, after a few years, we find him giving up print designing for the more private art of painting. In this way he goes over and becomes the true successor of the school of Shunsui.
Early prints by Toyoharu are very rare and very beautiful. His finest work is a set of four large prints illustrating the four accom- plishments. This is one of the series. In texture and sweetness of characterization it rivals Harunobu.
The beautifully drawn profile head is a rarity, and shows the com- plete hair-dressing.
174. Toyoharu About 1770.
Kakemonoye.
Boy flying kite. The unique beauty of this print is its grand opposition of solid orange and black.
175. Toyoharu. About 1774.
Painting on a kakemono.
A supper party.
liCnt by Kmest F. Fenollosa of Boston.
This is one of the earliest of Toyoharu's paintings and the most deli- cate. In daintiness it is like the handling of the finest print.
176. Toyoharu About 1779.
Painting on a large panel.
Young girl on New Year's day.
A remarkably large and rich specimen from the master's brush. In wealth of line it almost suggests the black and white prints of Kai- getsudo. In this richness of pattern we can see what Shunsho tried to render in his actors' elaborate dresses at this date.
176A. Toyoharu About 1788.
Painting on a panel.
Ladies and child looking at gold-fish. This large panel displays to still greater advantage Toyoharu's fine power as a painter. He is now in rivalry with Kiyonaga as a designer, though in a different field. In the care for perfect drawing, for com- bined strength and expressiveness of touch, for dignity of proportion, and for breadth of large impression, he is evidently pressing forward side by side with Kiyonaga on the upward path.
177. Toyoharu About 1784.
Painting on a screen of two panels.
Tea-house opening upon a garden.
I/Cnt by George W. Vanderbilt of New York. 60
This is the most elaborate of Toyoharu's paintings I have ever seen. The figures of the many ladies are each beautiful enough for a single kakemono or print. The handling of the brush is exquisitely light. We have here, too, for the first time, the charm of an Ukioye painting of a real Japanese garden ; not the idealized and abstract Kano land- scape of Moronobu and Choshun, but a realistic representation, with new technique of every detail just as it existed in his day.
178. Katsukawa Shunsho About 1769.
Small color print.
Actor, male figure in snow.
lycnt by Charles J. Morse of Chicago. Going back for a moment to the beginning of the century, we may recall that a school of painters, headed by Choshun, preserved the traditions of pictorial art, untainted by the painters, down to 1765. Shunsui, son or pupil of Choshun, who' headed this movement at the middle of the century, changed his family name, about that time, to Katsukawa. When in 1765 Harunobu, by his new invention of full color printing, turned the stream of Shunsui' s female representations into a new channel ; and, especially, when Toyoharu, relinquishing the field of prints, came over as a painter to invade that which Shunsui previously ruled, the latter practically found his occupation gone. He had one young pupil, however, whose ambition wotdd not allow him to accept the fate of extinction ; but who now, in the Ught of Haru- nobu's discovery, looked about for some new field which he might make distinctively his own. This young man was Shunsho, and the field he found was that of the actor-printing which Torii Kiyomitsu, on account of his conservatism, was now practically obliged to drop. Thus there is a marvellous shifting of schools ; Toyonobu's school in the person of Toyoharu invading Shunsui'? ; and Shigenaga's in the person of Harunobu stealing its thunder ; and now, per contra, Shun- sho, the heir of Shunsui' s painting school, invading the camp of the latter's bitterest and most vulgar rival, Torii.
But Shunsho cared naught for the stigma of vulgarity provided he could be successful ; and he saw in the theatre, and the costumes of actors, a chance to produce a great pictorial effect with cheap means, in a way that Kiyomitsu, weighted down by sixty years of Kiyonobu's traditions, could not conceive ; in a way, and with the resources of color printing analogous to those which Harunobu was now using in another field. His first work in this new line begins in the self-same year with Harunobu's, 1765, and continues parallel with his and with Koriusai's, in an unbroken stream through the periods Meiwa and Anyei, and even into the very heart of Kiyonaga's period, Temmei, in the seventeen eighties. In this great work, covering more than
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twenty years, Shunsho turned out thousands of original designs of actors, full of dramatic force, splendid and creative in color, and mir- roring the contemporary fashions of costume and hair-dressing year ( by year as faithfully as Harunobu and Koriusai. He had many
pupils, of whom the greatest were Shunko and his rival Buncho. In the list which follows we shall class his pupils' work with his accord- ing to their chronological order.
The actor prints of Shunsho have not yet been estimated by con- noisseurs at their full aesthetic value. We shall have no time here to describe each piece, but can only say in general that each is a creative masterpiece, revealing new conceptions in color, and resources in deli- cacy of design and printing, not inferior to Harunobu's.
In later life, when Kiyonaga, in his all-imperial sway, had driven Shunsho, as he had previously driven Koriusai, as he now drove everybody, from the field, Shunsho practically gave up print design- ing, and, like Toyoharu, devoted himself to painting. Some of his many works in this class are supremely beautiful. It was in his school, as we shall later see, that the great master of the future, Hokusai, received his first instructions as the pupil Shunro.
179. Shunsho About 1770.
Small color print.
Actor, male part.
Here we see the use of Harunobu's greens.
180. Shunko About 1770.
Small color print. Actor on a pine tree.
181. Buncho About 1770.
Small color print.
Actors, boy and girl.
Lent by Charles J. Morse of Chicago. Buncho, the rival of Shunsho in his earlier years, is more original than .the other pupils. He is one of those queer artists, like Shige- naga, whom one loves for their very queerness. But he is also a colorist of the first order, and in this design exhibits a grandeur of composition not inferior to Harunobu's. The scheme of tint is daring ; figures on soft grays against a background of intense green and orange.
182. Buncho About 1771.
Small color print.
Young man and woman in rain.
This reaches Buncho' s high-water mark in delicacy of sentiment, color, and texture.
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i83. Shunsho About 1771.
Kakemonoye.
Court lady and distant landscape. While Shunsho is noted chiefly for his actor prints, he also designed representations of every-day groups like Harunobu's. This is a per- fectly preserved specimen.
184. BuNCHO About 1772.
Small color print.
Actor with lion mask.
This is a beautiful harmony of orange, green, and soft grays. In the latter there is nothing faded, the Shunsho actor school aiming directly at soft tints.
185. Shunsho About 1773.
Small color print.
Girl with a box. This is one of the most individual and most graceful of Shunsho's girlish figures, fully comparable to Harunobu's strong designing.
186. Shxjnsho. . About 1774.
Small color print.
Tall, graceful girl with a fan,
Shunsho is now, after Harunobu's death, running a race neck and neck with Koriusai. "We notice here the use of the latter' s orange ; but it is so diluted with white that it flashes upon us with the very play of sunlight.
187. Shunsho About 1775.
Very large kakemonoye.
Portrait of a belle. This year and the next are the period of Shunsho's most graceful, even classic, designing in line and in pattern. It is the age of his great illustrated book, the most elaborate ever printed, the Seiro Bijin Awase. This unique print is the exact analogue of its style, and a perfect proof-impression.
188. Shunsho About 1776.
Small color print.
Girl amid grasses. This is Shunsho's most graceful and classic print in the style just described. Every line of the dress, sleeve, and skirt, of the obi, of the feather-like pattern, and of the swaying grasses, sweeps into a single total line-impression of utmost purity. It exhibits Shunsho's finest type of head and hair-dressing.
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iSg. Shunko About 1776.
Small color print.
Girl with a tea-tray. This is Shunko' s analogue of the same style. It is notable for the use of orange, which seems to fall in thick drops, as of blood.
190. Shunsho About 1777.
Color print.
Group of two actors, male and female.
I,ent by Frederick W. Gookin of Chicago. This print is one of Shunsho's finest in composition and in soft color- ing. As the red lead upon the design tarnishes, it but adds to the mystery of the effect.
191. Shunsho About 1777.
Small color print.
Father and child. This is one of Shunsho's most charming productions. The colors are all light and airy, and the little figure more thoroughly of a Japan- ese child, than any which Ukioye has before shown.
192. Shunsho About 1778.
Small color print.
Standing lady.
Ivcnt by Charles J. Morse of Chicago. One of Shunsho's strongest pieces, the dark chocolate color standing out with fine notan against paler tints of the same.
193. Shunko About 1778.
Small color print.
I,ady with rope. This may well be called " a symphony in grays." Black is used as their strongest note, and minute touches of orange bring out the tone. It is perfect in impression and color-preservation.
194. Shunsho About 1779.
Small color print.
Woman playing a flute. This work is contemporary with Koriusai's latest, and with Kiyonaga's growing strength. It is the most dignified of all of Shunsho's styles. Unusually for him, he uses a garment of solid red. The black obi, and the purple head-kerchief suggest comparison of this with Masanobu's and Harunobu's strongest works before described.
195. Shunko About 1779.
Small color print.
Girl with a basket on her head. This is a startling and strong creation, the intense black contrasting with the soft dove tones.
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196. Shunsho About 1780.
Small color print. Actor, male figure.
Notable by its contrast of black with pale rose.
197- Shunsho About 1780.
Small color print. Actor, male figure.
Notable for its opposition of dark ochrishred against brilliant orange.
198. Shunsho About 1781.
Painting on a kakemono.
Young man and woman under an umbrella in snow.
This in depth and quality of color shows the master's pictorial ana- logue to his prints. There is nothing more splendid in Ukioye paint- ing than this intensity of black and of red, nothing more minutely beautiful than the drawing of the female head.
T99. Shunsho About 1781.
Small color print. Actor, male part.
This in intensity and purity of impression and preservation is perhaps
the finest of all Shunsho' s prints.
200. Shunsho About 1782.
Small color-print.
Actor, female part.
Even at this late day Shunsho' s designs unite dignity and delicacy. This is beautiful in its soft blue grays. We do not speak of the hair- dressing, for this would somewhat anticipate what we have to say of Kiyonaga's forms, which are the most typical for dating.
201. Shunsho About 1783.
Painting on a kakemono.
Lady at toilet.
I<ent by Ernest F. FenoUosa of Boston. This painting is of exceptional interest, first, for the unusual attitude ; second, for the perfect view it gives of the back hair ; third, for the reflection of the face in the mirror ; fourth, for the depth of the color- ing ; and fifth, for the beautiful pattern of white storks flying across a gown of cerulean blue,
202. Shunyei About 1784.
Small color print.
Female figure, dancing.
I^nt by Frederick W. Gookin of Chicago. Shunyei, the best known of Shunsho's later pupils, did much during Temmei to preserve the school, strengthening the drawing, soften- ing and broadening the masses.
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203. Shunko About 1785.
Small color print.
Woman under a maple tree.
Here in these exaggerated proportions we see almost the last form of the great Shunsho school of actor prints, which has held the field alone for twenty years, and which is now about to be absorbed in the Napoleonic conquests of Kiyonaga, who, not content with driving from the field all rivals in designing females, the line of his earlier strength, now insists, upon claiming for himself also his ancestral Torii prerogative of actor drawing, which Kiyomitsu had tamely dropped.
204. KiTAO Shigemasa About 1765.
Small color print.
Young girl with chrysanthemums under a willow.
We must now go back to our central date to trace, through the same periods of Meiwa, Anyei, and Temmei, the work of the fourth great master of 1770, and of his principal pupils. I^ike Toyoharu's and Shunsho' s, Shigemasa's work follows on parallel with the line of Harunobu's and Koriusai's, until, coming face to face with Eyonaga's, he becomes, not the latter' s rival exactly, neither his follower, but his friendly co-worker. I have chosen thus to speak of all these artists' works, as a whole, including that of Temmei, before analyzing the ' qualities of Kiyonaga' s contemporary achievement, because the latter' s
work is so central, so final, so determinative of subsequent movements, that it seemed best to reserve it for study in relation to these latter.
Shigemasa's is rather a unique position among the great Ukioye masters. He was not anxious to produce much, or to compete with, others. His was a sort of aristocratic temper, calmly artistic, which delighted in perfection for its own sake, and never worked except in creative mood. While not arrogating to himself a marked originaUty, nor holding himself aloof from the influence of his contemporaries, he shows his own power in the way in which he utilizes all their sugges- tions, without ever losing his own personal feeling. Thus his work has a special look, dignified, carefully thought out, cool in color, choice in sentiment. Like Masanobu and Harunobu, he acquired Strength with years, until in his latest pictorial work he stands almost unrivalled for perfect beauty. His prints, which are extremely rare, are seldom signed after his earliest years ; but there is no mistaking their distinction. Whatever work came to his hand, whether it were painting, print designing, or book illustration, he executed cheerfully and with even mastery. In the last of these three fields, book illus- tration, he frequently co-operated with Shunsho ; and some of the finest pages in the Seiro Bijin Awase are from his pen.
In this rare print we see how original his work could be in the very first year of Harunobu's new manner. Here is the soft gray back-
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ground roughly executed, but a sweetness of feeling and a fine touch in details worthy of Shigenaga's successor.
205. Shigemasa About 1769.
Small color print.
At the archery gallery.
Here is a new scale of color in soft yellow green and pale purple.
206. Shigemasa About 1773.
Kakemonoye.
Girl with a clock.
Kakemonoye by Shigemasa are seldom found. This, though faded is a unique early specimen.
207. Shigemasa About 1774.
Small color print.
Street group at a door.
This work, entirely unlike that of any contemporary, is in drawing just like the illustrated books in outline of which Shigemasa produced so many perfect examples, worthily continuing the series begun by Okumura.
208. Shigemasa About 1775.
lyarge color print.
Two standing girls. Shigemasa now begins a series of works which specially illustrate his distinguishing qualities. While Koriusai is producing portraits of noted Yoshiwara belles, Shigemasa is executing a parallel representa- tion of the more refined charms of the professional singing girls, or Geisha. Here there is marked superiority to the work of both Koriusai and of Shunsho in simplicity of design, and in softness of coloring.
209. Shigemasa About 1776.
Small color print.
Two dancing girls.
lyCnt by Frederick W. Gookin of Chicago.
In this piece we see exactly the style of Shigemasa as shown in the
Seiro Bijin Awase; only, while there the fine curves of the drapery
for the most part lie in repose, they here sweep into that confusion of
serpentine motion of which this artist is the greatest delineator.
210. Shigemasa About 1776.
Large color print.
Girl followed by a servant with her Koto box.
I^nt by Charles J. Morse of Chicago. There is more real presence in these splendid figures than in the work of any contemporary, Kiyonaga not excepted. Shigemasa proves himself the greatest draughtsman of Anyei. His color here is as powerful through its notan as through its brilliancy of hue.
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211. Shigemasa About 1776.
lyarge color print.
Two standing giris.
The composition and the dignified drawing of Shigemasa grows still finer. The strong use of black is characteristic of the coming years ; but the soft tints of the dresses are Shigemasa's own.
212. Shigemasa About 1776.
I^arge color print.
Two ladies and servant bearing box. Here is a still more striking composition of three figures, filling the whole space. There is nothing like it in Koriusai. Kiyonaga at this day, with all the savage dash of his youthful penmanship, must have bowed to Shigemasa as the one man from whom he could learn great things. We may believe that much of his later refinement was determined by Shigemasa's influence. The Une idea of this piece, and the clear large notan spotting, recall again to us the final triumphs of Masanobu and of Harunobu. In color, too, there sounds a new chord, as great as it is calm. The tints are got by hatching one color in lines over an- other. How original and splendid the contrast against the black of the strong yellow cooled by reds ! Nothing so approaching the tex- ture of cloth, as does the dove-colored obi, has, before or after, been achieved in Ukioye printing. This piece, with all its wealth, is abso- lutely normal, clear and balanced in all its parts, and in every particular.
213. Shigemasa About 1777.
Small color print.
N6 dancer with fox mask.
I think this is the most intense representation of motion in the whole history of Ukioye, not excepting the strongest work of Hokusai. The line idea in the blacks is almost worthy of an ancient Chinese painter of Buddhist altar pieces, even of Ririomin himself. If the con- trast of black and white seems startling, it only adds to the strength of the impression of motion.
214. Shigemasa About 1778.
Painting on a kakemono.
Two standing Geisha.
It is valuable to study here the deUberate power and finish of Shige- masa's workmanship. There have been, perhaps, more brilliant geniuses, but none so completely the master of his own resources. In the painting of cloth textures he stands without a rival. Notice the solid embroidery of the chrysanthemum pattern ; also the glow of the red of the undergarment through the gauzy black of the outer. There is a most valuable signature.
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215. Shigemasa About 1781.
Kakemonoye.
Two lovers and showman with a monkey.
Here, indeed, Shigemasa stands side by side with Ziyonaga in the full glory of the latter' s power. There is no other kakemonoye by any artist as richly crowded in perfect composition. There is no print by any master in which the hands and drapery textures are as carefully and deliberately drawn. There is no work of Kiyonaga's in which the power of the Japanese pen to modulate its strokes in thickening and thinning is more perfectly shown. Kiyonaga may have more dash and superhuman fire ; but this is as normal and deliberate in its com- plexities as the motions of the solar system. It is a first proof-print in perfect preservation.
216. Shigemasa About 1786.
Painting on a kakemono.
Figures on a highway, with background of rice-fields.
I<ent by Ernest F. FenoUosa of Boston. Who could have believed that there could be another Kiyonaga besides Kiyonaga? One, too, who cotdd eliminate all professional mannerism, and translate his technical beauties into the individual terms of, so to speak, a perfect amateurish conception ? The fatal antimony of all art lies in the gap between a child's absoluteness of impression and the sophistications which come with mastery over means of expression. Here Shigemasa, for this once, has, almost uniquely, bridged the abyss. The simple, naive touches upon the landscape details, utterly innocent of manner, and seeming by themselves almost childishly crude, reveal their transcendent mastery in an absolute reahzation of Nature's charms. No landscape in all Ukioye so fills one who has travelled in the land of the gods with homesick reminiscence.
The vision of these travellers, too, is a transfiguration of Kiyonaga. They have his beauty, but disembodied. Where he is eloquent, they babble of sweet dreams. They are creatures to love. So in the unearthly delicacy of color the wings of Shigemasa' s genius retain their poise even at these rarefied altitudes. No symphony in pinks and blues ever before so passed out of human scale as to make us doubt whether they are visible to the eye, or audible to the ear. If the painting is deficient in notan, it is because notan is a weight unknown in Heaven.
217. KiTAO Masanobu About 1778.
Small color print.
I^ady and servants.
Of Shigemasa' s many pupils there are several who merit special notice. Shunman belongs so completely to the Kiyonaga movement that we shall defer his consideration. But Masayoshi and Masanobu are strong original creators in the master's manner. It is worth while to compare this print with those of Kiyonaga at the same date.
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2i8. K. Masanobu About 1782.
I^arge color print from his finest illustrated book. A group of Yoshawara belles.
li&it by Howard Mansfield of New York. In this book Masanobu aimed at a complexity of design never tried before. There are color passages in it of great beauty.
219. K. Masanobu About 1782.
Painting on a panel.
A richly dressed belle.
It is of extreme interest to compare this with the preceding. It is the only painting by Masanobu I have ever seen ; and it illustrates this phase of his work in which by sheer complexity he was trying to rival, if not eclipse, the reputation of Kiyonaga.
220. K. Masanobu About 1783.
Kakemonoye.
Two figures under a cherry tree.
I^nt by Charles J. Morse of Chicago. Here Masanobu more thoroughly succeeds in reducing his complexity to harmony. In warmth of splendid color, if not in power of drawing, he has now indeed become Kiyonaga' s rival. The composition is of the finest, and the cherry blossoms specially beautiful.
221. K. Masanobu About 1784.
I^arge color print.
A group of girls. Here, both in the drawing and the composition, we mark a nearer approach to the manner of Kiyonaga, by entering into whose atmos- phere all the geniuses of the day seem to become exalted.
222. KiTAO Masayoshi About 1780.
Large color print.
Group of storks about a pine tree.
Masayoshi is one of those artists who always does things a little differ- ent from anybody else. He dehghts in queer landscape efiects. This subject is unique in Ukioye, though occurring in contemporary Kano painting. It is here magnificently handled in terms of color printing.
223. K. Masayoshi About 1790.
Small color print.
Girls watering chrysanthemum blooms. This odd subject is most characteristic of Japan, her gardeners delight- ing in raising the largest number of blooms from a single root. It is interesting to compare this with the Western impressionists' treatment of similar subjects.
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224. TORII KlYONAGA About 1 774.
Small color print.
Group of girls at a temple. We must now consider the work of a man who, all things considered, is to be regarded as the central figure of Ukioye. All up to his central date is a rising curve ; all afterward the gradual descent of decay.
Already we have said so much incidentally about Torii Kiyonaga, that we have anticipated many of his qualities. "We showed one of his boyish works, as a primitive, before Harunobu's discovery. In the eclipse of his teacher, Kiyomitsu, for a time the young man is lost. Not originally of Torii blood, but an adopted son, Kiyonaga' s inborn genius doubtless benefited by the breaking down of old traditions in the Torii school of actor-designing. Kiyonaga found himself pitted against such men as Harunobu, Shunsho, and Shigemasa, men who could stimulate his incipient powers.
To Shigemasa' s influence especially do we owe this rare and origi- nal early print. No trace of Kiyomitsu appears. But there is a deli- cate pose of the figure, and a clear handling of the notan, which must have brought him at once into notice. The color too is markedly original, being saturated with a warm tone of yellow.
225. Kiyonaga About 1777.
Kakemonoye.
Reading the love-letter. This cannot be called a daring composition. In head and face it vacil- lates between the influence of Shigemasa and Koriusai. The drapery of the standing figure, too, has the formal sweep of the latter. But in the rough touches upon the tree trunk we mark a vigor which has not been seen since the days of Moronobu.
226. Kiyonaga About 1777.
Small color print.
Women washing clothes.
It is in scenes like these that Kiyonaga first demonstrates his powerful originality. We see it in the firm but plastic stroke, in the charm of the composition which relies more upon realistic impression than upon personal interest in the figures. He is a masculine Harunobu. Here the details of landscape, fence, and wild grass are set unafiectedly with the force of real presence. Kiyonaga already rejects the innovation of Harunobu in filling up his background with a tint. With his pow- erful drawing and massing the figures detach and come forward of themselves ; and the flat white of the paper palpitates with the per- spective of atmosphere.
227. Kiyonaga About 1778.
Small color print.
Two girls under a willow tree. Lent by Charles J. Morse of Chicago. This is the sort of work which made Koriusai tremble in his stockings.
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Kiyonaga is becoming conscious of a new power in drawing. Mark tlie advance upon the last number. Now the pen strokes are freer, not so brutally forceful. The composition is perfect. The figures stand out like nature against the creamy sky. The tone of the faces differentiates of itself In notan, also, there is organization. I^astly in color new beauties appear. The gauziness of the purple drapery, revealing the tint of flesh and red petticoat, is unequalled even by Shigemasa, in easy mastery. This is perhaps the most beautiful of his early prints.
228. KlYONAGA About 1779,
Small color print.
Woman alighting from a kago.
Kiyonaga has lavishly used his new found power of drawing in a rick and dif&cult composition. One seems to feel the lines fairly fly from his brush, like splinters fronl a woodman's stroke. Action is intense, textures aerial, as if precipitated upon ivory. Cut out and examine the bust and head of the man. Has any artist of the world ever equalled the drawing of the kerchief upon his head ?
229. ZiYONAGA About 1779.
Triptych.
Three actors in the style of Shunsho.
Kiyonaga now tries his powers in a new field, but one in which he may well claim ancestral rights. Surely Shunsho has no chance against such spontaneous elegance of line. He is matched in his own color scheme and finest patterning. He could never have conceived such breadth of simple blacks as in these hats and ohi. It has been said that Japanese art never introduces symmetry. It is an extreme rarity to find a complete triptych among the actor prints. The rarity is more than doubled when the work is Kiyonaga' s.
230. Kiyonaga About 1780.
Kakemonoye.
Man reading a letter. This composition is like one that precedes; but the tone is finer. Kiyonaga imitates the obliqueness of Koriusai's late heads, but draws the construction of the pointed wings more carefully.
231. Kiyonaga About 1780.
Kakemonoye.
Two girls tmder a cherry-tree. This is a bold creation of Kiyonaga' s, especially in the contrast of an orange obi with the soft blue of a head-veil which reminds us of Moronobu's design. Similar colors are repeated in the dandelion pat- tern at the bottom of the gray skirt. Here is seen Kij'onaga's typical female head of the year with its oblique nose and square jaw.
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232. KlYONAGA About 1 78 1.
Painting on a panel.
Three girls on a breezy day by the river.
lycnt by George "W. Vanderbilt of New York. The power here manifested in Kiyonaga's drawing and atmospheric setting is quite beyond words to describe. Every inch of space is alive with motion. It is interesting to see the great, solid, splintery strokes of Kiyonaga's brush, which seem to have been executed with lightning-like rapidity. Is there any painting of the modern French school that can rival this for vitality and open-air setting ?
233. KlYONAGA. About 1782,
Kakemonoye.
Portrait of a lady with an umbrella. This is the perfection of Kiyonaga's work in prints up to this date. He has here deliberately sacrificed the fireworks of his drawing for delicate and elegant line, like Shigemasa's. It is the point of evolu- tion of the later well-known Kiyonaga manner and type of head. Here, for a third time, we strike a perfect and restrained beauty of pro- portion which we may call classic. The diaphanous blue of the dress reveals wonderfully the white of the undergarment with its red lining.
234. KlYONAGA. About 1783.
Kakemonoye.
Portrait of a lady with tunbrella. Just as in the masterpieces of Greek art we trace a conscious efiFort to perfect the proportion of each part, if only by a hair's breadth, so in this print, compared with the preceding, we can watch the very stress of Kiyonaga's soul in its aim for purity and delicacy. It is as if he took the drawing for his last year's print, and said to himself, " Now, how can I make it more beautiful, point for point ? ' ' What we first notice is a change in the head, a rounding up of the jaw and chin, a shortening of the nose, a less elongated eye. In the gauzy costume itself we mark a new thing, the change of color as it folds upon itself, varying the sheen.
235. KlYONAGA. About 1783.
I^arge color print.
Three girls with two attendants. This shows a new harmony of reds mixed with white, and blacks mixed with yellow. Kiyonaga seldom uses such variegated patterns. The print is a proof and in perfect preservation.
236. Kiyonaga About 1784.
Small color print.
Girls fishing. Here now begins the personal charm in Kiyonaga's drawing of girls, as marked as Harunobu's. The simplicity of the coloring shows the
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artist's self-reliance. His faces have now become lovable for their own sweetness. What could be more perfect than the drawing of the leg ?
237. KiYONAGA. About 1784.
I^arge color print.
Three ladies.
I^nt by Frederick W. Gookin of Chicago. This is a specimen in Ziyonaga's series of women's portraits which he continued from Koriusai's. This print is most delicate in line and texture, and charming in the even fading of its color.
238. ZiYONAGA. About 1784.
Large color print.
Women at toilet.
Kiyonaga has become more than strong or delicate in drawing. He makes a new idyllic use of his line ideas. Never have patterns been so drawn to conform to clinging folds.
239. Kiyonaga. About 1785.
I^arge color print.
Three women at toilet.
Here is exhibited Kiyonaga' s finest treatment of his tallest propor- tions. It surpasses all previous Ukioye in the drawing of the nude, and in the suggestion of the nude under the clinging garments.
240. Kiyonaga. About 17S5.
lyarge color print.
Three women at night with lantern.
I^ent by Frederick W. Gookin of Chicago. All Kiyonaga' s finest qualities are now combined with a matchless brilliancy of color. He uses primary tints with as much ease and softness as if they were grays. He creates with the whole spectrum as readily as did Masanobu in green and rose.
241. Kiyonaga. About 1785.
Large color print.
Three girls in the iris garden.
Lent by George W. Vanderbilt of New York. It is but taking a step more for Kiyonaga to throw in a complete land- scape background. In this he realizes the fact that sunshine is indi- cated more by color than by light, in making the flat tone of his grass a firank yellow. The drawing of the iris is worthy of Korin ; the composition of the whole perfect ; and the coloring of unexampled richness. This may perhaps be called the highest point reached by Kiyonaga.
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242. KlYONAGA About 1785.
I*arge color print.
Same as preceding number.
Another experiment is made by using green on the grass. The colors
are beautiful even in their faded condition.
243. KlYONAGA About 1785.
Kakemonoye.
Very tall standing girl.
In this unique figure, throwing aside almost all graces of form, of pat- tern, or of color, Kiyonaga, in his very simplicity, realizes some meas- ure of Harunobu's last sublimity. The sweetness of rendering the little green hanging fern ball is a last touch of refined feeling, which is rare with Kiyonaga.
244. Kiyonaga About 1786.
lyarge color print.
Girls under weeping cherry-tree. In this year Kiyonaga reaches, possibly, greater power, but with a slight suspicion of mannerism. There is a splendid total sweep in the drapery of the three figures ; and there is here shown a new tendency in the use of solid black, often in combination with green.
245. Kiyonaga About 1786.
I/arge color print.
Four girls with pink caps at a temple gate.
Perhaps nothing short of a touch of Kiyonaga's mannerism would have quite rendered so free and wavy this most superb of his composi- tions, glowing, as it also does, with his finest color passages of black to bright green.
246. Kiyonaga About 1786.
Small color print.
Three figures in grays. This shows to what refinement Kiyonaga's grandest style can be re- duced when photographed down, as it were, to minuteness of scale. Composition and notan are perfect.
247. Kiyonaga About 1786.
Ivarge color print.
Three figures in snow. I<ent by Howard Mansfield of New York.
On this central male figure we find Kiyonaga's most powerful use of black, contrasted with a red which he produces by hatching rose over yellow.
248. Kiyonaga About 1786.
Triptych.
Girls disembarking from a river boat. This is one of Kiyonaga's noblest out-door compositions, the black and rose prow of the boat rising to the point of grandeur.
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249- KiYONAGA About 1787.
Large color print. Three girls on a balcony.
lycnt by Howard Mansfield of New York. If the gray at the left is meant for a distant sea, rising to a horizon line, then is it wonderfully broad in its suggestion.
250. Ejyonaga About 1787.
Triptych.
Girls on a balcony overlooking the river. A beautiful specimen of Kiyonaga's perfected manner. We notice that the faces are becoming longer, and the hair softened and more blunt at the sides, as if the spring within had become disused.
251. KiYONAGA About 1787.
Kakemonoye.
Girl in black hood in the wind. A fine piece in drawing and printing, suggesting the movement for which Kiyonaga earlier was famous, but now more willowy and yield- ing in its proportions.
252. KiYONAGA About 1788.
lyarge color print.
Girls at a temple gate.
Lent by George W. Vanderbilt of New York. One of Kiyonaga's most beautiful designs of the later type, opposing figures in warm tones against the cool of granite and a shaded bank.
253. KiYONAGA About 1788.
Triptych.
Group of girls washing cloth in a garden. The warm, sunny yellow of this whole beautiful garden is finely con- trasted with the angular blacks, and with the cool spots which the quietly robed figures cut against it. The whole design has the per- fection of out-door feeling.
254. KiYONAGA About 1788.
Kakemonoye.
Country girl on a red horse. What I have called Kiyonaga's growing mannerism is here strongly shown. There is a tendency to fall into abstract curvature, for its own sake. We shall see this style becoming specially characteristic of Yeishi at; a corresponding date.
255. KiYONAGA About 1789.
Large ink-proof print.
Figures on the strand before Enoshima. Yet what charm there can lie even in this later system of loose curves is here shown in a rare proof from the first ink block cut from one of Kiyonaga's richest designs.
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The practice was to cut this ink block first, upon which, as we can here see, the signature, when wanted, always appeared. From this first block trial proofs were struck, showing an angel cut in the lower right-hand comer, and a vertical line at the upper. From such proofs laid upon new wood the color blocks, one for each color, were now so cut that, in printing, the sheets could be laid for registry against these guiding projections. Such original ink proofs of those early days are extremely rare, and highly valued by collectors. Here the drawing of the nude parts of the small boy should be compared with Hokusai's ; and the way of rendering the pine trees on the distant hill is positively grand.
256. KiYONAGA About 1789.
Kakemonoye.
Tall lady watching a flight of birds.
Here the loose curvature weakens the figure as compared with Kiyo- naga's earlier manner ; yet a certain nigligi charm results firom it.
257. KiYONAGA About 1789.
Ivarge color print.
Actors in foreground with chorus behind.
lycnt by Charles J. Morse of Chicago. It might seem that Riyonaga was on the high road to degeneration, did we not now observe his new powerful treatment of actor compositions.
We have seen that, firom time to time, he had entered the adjoining field pre-empted by Shunsho.
But now, in the second half of his decade, he finds it no difficult task to drive out the latter' s demoralized pupils, and take possession himself. For a few years, until he chooses to retire, and hands the work over to Toyokuni, he presents us with the most splendid series of actor-print designs in the whole course of Ukioye.
Of such this is the finest I have ever seen. The color, as such, is probably the most grand in its brilliancy of all Kiyonaga's work. This is due primarily to the masses of velvet, black cut by warm reds and purples in the foreground group, which as a whole is contrasted with the quieter blues and greens of the chorus. But the unique fea- ture of this perfect print is the darkening of the background behind the chorus to a shade of black less intense than that of the actors. Against this night sky, or darkened space of the theatre, the leaves of a scenic willow cut, silhouetted in green light. The total eflfect is as strong and as strange as that of the last great hand-colored work by Okumura Masanobu.
25S. KiYONAGA About 1789.
I,arge color print.
Three actors playing checkers with fallen plum blossoms. This superb piece, though lacking the weird effect of the dark back-
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ground, is, perhaps, more splendid in drawing and grouping, and more elegantly rich in the softness of its printed textures. The drawing of the plum branches has the vigor of the great Okio, the contemporary ] master of the Shijo school in Kioto. It is only because Okio in Kioto,
and Kiyonaga in Yedo, attained to such height of design, that we can speak of the end of the last century as a culminating period in the history of Japanese art.
259. Kiyonaga About 1789.
Painting on a kakemono.
Young girl in pink under a willow tree.
I<ent by Ernest F. FenoUosa of Boston. It is a pleasure thus to see the actual execution of Kiyonaga in his last mood, even as we have already seen him in his earliest, that of the river scene. This pink is a color unknown before in art. The rapid modulations of the master's peculiar brush -stroke leave one fairly breathless.
260. Kiyonaga About 1790.
lyarge color print.
Group of girls in holiday dress in Yoshiwara at New Year's. Here, at the very last, Kiyonaga gives us one of his most beautiful crowded compositions. It is not strong in notan, or peculiar in color ; but carefully drawn and delicate in sentiment. It is a proof impression.
261. Kiyonaga About 1790.
I^arge color print.
Archery practice of noblemen. This, the finest of the series to which the last number belongs, is as refined as, but far more vigorous than, any contemporary Tosa drawing of such an aristocratic subject. It shows what Kiyonaga might have done had he entered other fields of painting. Hokusai never comes so near to the pure Samurai type as in the oval-faced kneeling gentleman. I,et this be our farewell to Eliyonaga, that we recognize his own recog- nition of the fact that his genius had become too noble, and his t5rpes of beauty too high, to be longer appreciated by a populace essentially vulgar, and desirous of change. Thus is revealed the dilemma, and, in a sense, the contradiction latent in Ukioye. From this time on- ward the lines of change, carried out by other hands, however brilliant and realistic, lead slowly but surely into downward paths.
262. Shuncho About 1782.
Small color print.
Man carrying girl in winter.
But, as in all periods of degeneration, the beginning of the change was invisible to contemporaries. Rather did they conceive that they were rushing along a highway toward firesh glories. If our conjecture be
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correct, Kiyonaga alone knew tliat an end had come. His work was not cut short by death, like Masanobu's and Harunobu's ; neither did he abandon prints in despair, and turn to painting, like Koriusai and Shunsho. But like a king he abdicated when he felt that his useful- ness was over ; withdrew from the whole realm of Ukioye, except that, as the head of the Torii house, he allowed his name to be used upon the yearly illustrated advertisements of the actors' guild ; and lived in retirement without production for something like twenty-four years.
During Ziyonaga's reign, from 1780 to 1790, every artist of note had felt his influence and consciously or unconsciously conformed to his tj'pe. As for pupils in all rival schools, they practically went over to him in a body. It is not necessary to suppose that they all became his per- sonal disciples. Enough to see clearly that they were satellites revolv- ing about him as the central planet. Of these the closest to the master was Shuncho. At first a pupil of the Shunsho actor school under the name Katsukawa, not only was he one of the earliest to turn his face to the rising sun, but he became rapidly the most adequate reflector of its light. In short he is the alter-ego of Kiyonaga, as was Kiyomasu of Kiyonobu. It is difficult to distinguish unsigned works of the two men ; but it can be said that Shuncho's work tends to be just a little more effeminate in its beauties than Kiyonaga's. Of the latter' s many followers we naturally consider his work first.
This print illustrates his style at the moment of transition. We feel the influence of a certain angularity of Shunsho derivation, and of a conscious effort, not entirely successful, to be like Kiyonaga.
263. Shuncho About 1783.
Kakemonoye.
Young girl with umbrella and fan.
But here the change is fully accomplished, as we can see by com- parison with Kiyonaga's contemporary treatment of the same subject.
264. Shuncho About 1796.
I<arge color print.
Party in the country, rice fields in the distance.
Shuncho's work is most happy in its sunny, out-of-door effects. His innocent groups, wandering like sweet children through fields, think- ing poems to spring blooms, or culhng wild-flowers by secluded pools, fully illustrate those traits in our charming islanders which I^afcadio Heam so well describes.
265. Shuncho About 1797-
Large color print.
Girls about to embark.
I^ent by Charles J. Morse of Chicago.
In this piece our artist comes very near to the strength and wealth of
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Kiyonaga. The soft green in the skirt is an unexpected note ; the treatment of trees on the distant shore as if they were the model for all modem French landscape painters.
266. Shuncho About 1797.
I,arge color print.
Three girls on wharf. The indications of dates follow completely the clew to Kiyonaga's, previously given.
267. Shuncho About 1788.
I<arge color print.
Three girls in a temple garden.
lyent by Howard Mansfield of New York. The perfect freshness of the surface and the colors is notable.
268. Shuncho About 1788.
Triptych.
Bevy of girls in a large garden. This is typical of Shuncho' s delight in seeing crowds of happy, girlish faces, against the broad sunny yellows of grass-grown slopes.
269. Shuncho About 1789.
Kakemonoye.
Two girls, distant shore.
Lent by George W. Vanderbilt of New York. Still again one looks to the backgrovmd as an organic part of the composition.
270. Shuncho About 1789.
Kakemonoye.
Tall standing girl with fan. Though low in tone, this tall willowy figure is beautiftd in color.
271. Shuncho About 1790.
Triptych.
Girls with a chrysanthemum basket.
272. Shuncho About 1790.
Triptych.
Girls disembarking fi-om river boat. This is indeed one of the finest of all Shuncho 's triptychs. The tones of the crowded figures are clearly and purely disposed ; and he has known, like his master, how to use the black prow of a boat as a strong feature. What could be more innocent than these girlish faces ? How, with flat tints, can they be made so to bathe in open atmosphere ? At this very moment of Kiyonaga's last work, Shuncho also achieves one of the greatest technical triumphs in Ukioye.
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273- Shuncho About 1791.
Ivarge color print.
Girls at home. This, as most of his single sheets, is probably one of a triptych. He and his contemporaries were such natural designers, that they made their composition perfect, whether the purchaser desired to mount it as a whole, or to treat each portion as a separate picture.
274. Shuncho About 1792.
Large color print.
Belle and four attendants.
But a subject like this was probably designed for a single sheet.
275. Setonzan About 1776.
Small color print.
Boys at play. Another of Kiyonaga's strongest followers is Katsugawa Shunzan, who, like Shuncho, had been a late pupil of Shunsho in the school of actor designing. In this early piece, however, we see him trying his hand at an original design which would have done credit to Koriusai or Shigemasa.
276. Shtjnzan About 1779.
Small color print.
Actor with wheels.
Here is a rare, signed example of one of Shunzan' s actors in the Shunsho style.
277. Shunzan About 1783.
Small color print.
Orchestra and dance. A rare composition for any school. Its elements are derived from Shunsho tradition ; but there is a desire to strengthen the complicated lines, enliven the color, and sweeten the faces, which betokens the stress of a move toward Kiyonaga which was not completed till about 1787.
278. Shtjnzan About 1793.
Triptych.
At the gate of a large temple.
Here is a perfect specimen of Shunzan's ripe, Kiyonaga style, reveal- ing a power of large composition and full designing which justifies his rank as one of the Emperor Kiyonaga's handful of marshals.
Shtjnman About 1788.
Small color print.
Boy and two girls with fish.
But not only were the petty princes of the Katsukawa school drawn into alliance with the new power, but its seductions led to violation of
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279
friendly territory like that of Shigemasa. Of the latter' s pupils, Ma- sanobu and Masayoshi held aloof; but the genius of a third Kitao pupil, Shunman, was too restlessly on the search for new modes of expression. Shunman, like Shigenaga and Buncho, is one of those strange personalities who infuse their art with a nameless individual charm. Everything he does has a strange touch. The Kiyonaga face becomes distorted with a sort of divine frenzy ; trees grope about with their branch tips like sentient beings ; flowers seem to exhale unknown perfumes, and the waters of his streams writhe and glide with a sort of reptilian fascination.
But in this small design we see the most normal manifestation of Shunman' s quahties. It is Hke a splendid vital Kiyonaga in its drawing, in its coloring, in its landscape details, and in its perfect tone. I^ike aU great work, it comes before us as a new idea, but so natural in its self-justification, we have a vague feeling that we must have always known it. Is there anything in all Hokusai at once as natural and unmannered as the action of the man and the drawing of the fish ?
280. Shunman About 1792.
I,arge color print.
Salt-girls.
281. Shunman About 1792.
Triptych.
Groups of girls in the country.
I<ent by George W. Vanderbilt of New York. But Shunman started an entirely original style in the attempt to treat full out-door groups in tones of pure gray. In this he was markedly successful, enlivening his neutral gradations with sparkling jewels of red or yellow or green upon tiny leaf or airy blossom. In this most perfect example of such work, Shunman has risen for a moment to a nobility of face, and a grace in his powerful curves, which make the work hold rank among the greatest masterpieces.
282. Shunman About 1793.
Set of two prints.
Group on a temple portico. But here we notice markedly the oddities amid which occasionally Shunman loves to disport himself.
283. Shunman About 1794.
Painting on a kakemono.
Two girls in moonlight.
It is interesting to compare with his prints the light, almost careless touch of the master in his pictorial moods. The tallness of his figures akeady indicates a new shifting of fashionable proportions, which,
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after Kiyonaga's abdication, rushes on through the period Kuansei toward an almost feverish extravagance.
284. Ybishi About 1786.
lyarge color print.
Three girls and rice fields. Kiyonaga is the lord of Temmei. At the opening of Kuansei he with- draws. But his most creative successors, at first rooting their work in the soil of his tradition, soon engraft upon it features which are dis- tinctive of the new life and taste and art of this second new period. Who, then, shall be the lord of Kuansei ? Shuncho is too like Kiyo- naga. Neither Shunzan or Shunman have the strength of new vision. The fact is that no one man of all the young aspirants was great enough alone to wear Kiyonaga's mantle ; but, like Alexander's empire, the latter' s heritage had to be divided into separate, if not rival kingdoms. Speaking roughly, then, the satraps of Kuansei are three, Yeishi, Utamaro, and Toyokuni.
The first of these, Yeishi, was not even an importation from any rival Ukioye branch, but no less a conquest than a scion of the aristo- cratic Kano academy, stolen out from under the very Shogun's sacred nose. He had been a pupil of the Yedo court painter Kano Yeisen, firom whom he took the first character of his name ; but this youth doubtless shocked all of his firiends in tiring of the solemn old Chinese poets who had been gliding about in impossible landscapes since Tanyu first labelled them, and of the semi-serious, long-headed old gods who gave knowing winks to their turtles and storks, and in run- ning off to such abominable haunts of the cow-headed Buddhist Satan as Danj ire's theatre-pit, firagrant with the odors of sak^ and raw fish, or the lantern-hung balconies whence samisens tinkled a cheerful accompaniment to the laughter of merry damsels on the river-boats. He evidently soon became naturalized in his new quarters ; for we find him surpassing even Kiyonaga in the keenness of his characterizations. The latter had, as it were, floated over this garden-bed of kaleido- scopic dissipations with something of the dignity of a great Ho& ; but Yeishi walked about among the blossoms as intimately as a heron. With no idealizations to trouble him, he put down what he saw as frankly as a young reporter let in for the first time behind the scenes. But in this early print we still see something of the more restrained sentiment of Temmei, the finer manners of Eliyonaga's self-respecting, though plebeian court.
285. Yeishi. About 1787.
I<arge color print.
Gathering shell-fish. A beautiful, clear example of Yeishi' s work in the Kiyonaga manner ; the sweet figures bending over, with fair, loose drapery tossed in the
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queer little wiggles of Yeishi'spen, which he caught from what I have called the mannered style of Kiyonaga.
286. Ye;ishi. 1787,
Kakemonoye.
Girl dreaming.
287. Ybishi. About 1788.
I/arge color print.
Figures at a booth by the rice fields.
I/cnt by Charles J. Morse of Chicago. But here Yeishi put fire into his thought, which he caught, not from Kiyonaga, but from gods of his own. The figures seem inspired by some new force which pulls them out into great sweeping lines which are cut by the angular forms of the half-unrolled screen-matting of a tea-booth, or the strong checkers of distant dyked rice-fields.
288. Y:eiSHi About 1788
Triptych.
Figures on a road by the rice fields. Here is the total triptych of which the last was but one piece. The extraordinary power is not lost in difiusion through the mass. The faces are as of fiery beings from another world. The landscape is Japan itself, warm, lazy plains of succulent rice, asleep in the lap of pine-crowned hills. The masses of the cryptomerias stand up strong and solemn as temple-gates.
289. Yeishi. About 1789.
I/arge color print.
Girls under a maple tree. Yeishi is the one master who succeeds in growing independently Shunman's delicate variety of blossoming grays. But he frequently uses, as here, more color than the former; or, as at other times, throws up rich purples and cool yellows against the neutral notan.
290. Ybishi. About 1789.
Large color print.
Very beautiful belle and attendants.
Lent by Howard Mansfield of New York.
291. Ybishi About 1789.
Proof of ink block, and color print of same.
Girls and double cherry tree. It is of the very greatest and rarest interest to compare these two prints side by side ; the original proof of the sharp ink block, cut so as to allow for the color masses of the double cherry blooms, and the finished resultant of all the color impressions from blocks determined by this proof It is one of Yeishi's most splendid compositions, in which nature and man are of equal factorial value.
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292. Yeishi About 1790.
Original ink proof.
Girls at a well.
293. Yeishi About 1792.
Ivarge color print.
Interior group.
294. Yeishi About 1792.
Triptych.
Interior of a Yoshiwara palace.
This triptych, in sparkle of design, force of drawing, largeness of mass- ing, purity of color, sharpness of impression, and fineness of preserva- tion, is surely one of the greatest works of Yeishi, we, of a century later, shall ever be privileged to see.
295. Yeishi About 1794.
Triptych.
Interior of a palace by the Bay of Yedo. Here the new, taller, and looser feeling of Kuansei first begins to assert itself.
296. Yeishi. About 1798.
Very large color print.
Three girls resting. In this print of remarkable size and shape, the Kuansei degeneration is in full blast. Striking as the composition is, and fi-ee as is its flow, there is a vulgarity in proportion, in feature, and in the very abandon of the drawing which reveals a taste of a populace finally and irrevo- cably cut off firom all ideals, social or artistic.
297. Yeishi. About 1800.
I<arge color print.
TaU standing girls under wistaria.
In presence of this new type we could hardly believe that we were in such close connection with a Kiyonaga original, were it not that we can trace, year by year, every step of the rapid change. The almost absurd elongation of the figure, by this date reaches its extreme ; and the distortion of the features has obliterated all trace of the Kiyonaga type. Yet there is a beauty and a swing in this very free- dom which especially endear it to all artist souls who, in their own struggles against tradition, are inclined to over- value freedom at the expense of solid pictorial construction.
298. Yeishi About 1802.
Painting on a panel.
Tall girl at toilet.
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299- Yeishi. About 1805.
Painting on a kakemono.
Very fashionable girl. Soon after the beginning of the century, Yeishi, the first of the three satraps, was driven from his domain of color printing by the pressure of the other two. Possibly he could not keep pace with their rapid progress. Originally trained as a painter, it was not diflScult for him to find occupation in reminiscence of his early work. Certain it is that from 1805 to about 18 15 he poured forth a torrent, so to speak, of rapid brush-work, characteristic of Yedo beauties more natural than the odd combinations into whose muddy depths the school of printing now plunged. These paintings are very simple in line and mass, and often as distinguished in pose as a Hokusai.
300. Yeisho About 1796.
Triptych.
Under the cherry-trees. Yeisho is the most original of Yeishi' s many pupils.
301. Ykisho About 1798.
Triptych.
Girls in attendance on Daimio.
302. Yeistji. About 1803.
Large color print.
The flute lesson.
303. Nagasyoshi About 1796.
Ivarge color print.
Girls in boats. This man was evidently a personal pupil of Kiyonaga, taking the first character of his name from his master's last, as Kunisada did from Toyokuni. He is a designer of power.
304. KiYOMiNE About 1804.
Large color print.
Lady looking at cherry blossoms.
Lent by Frederick W. Gookin of Chicago. Kiyomine is one of the next generation of Torii to Kiyonaga, and the latter's personal pupil. Some of his designs have exceptional elegance.
305. KiTAGAWA UTAMARO About 1 777.
Painting in ink on a large kakemono.
Hotei and boys, wrestling. "We now come to a man about whom there has been more talk in the West than any of the Ukioyeshi, except Hokusai. He has been honored with a volume all to himself. French collectors have vied with one
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another to become the possessors of his choicest pieces. He has been reckoned by some the central figure of Ukioye. Surely such a man must have been a commanding genius. But, since our purpose in this catalogue is to say only things which have never yet been said, and whose knowledge has been deduced at first hand from the testimony of the objects themselves, it behooves us to make our independent estimate.
There can be no question but that, of the three satraps of Kuansei, Utamaro holds the hegemony. Yet, at first, he is one of the many aspirants for office under Kiyonaga. As an exponent of Kiyonaga's ideas, Utamaro shows considerable originality ; but, as the years of Kuansei come with their new tastes, Utamaro first finds full scope for his powers. It is vain for the admirers of Utamaro to rank him chiefly for his work in Temmei. That which is most Utamaroish in Utamaro is a new art, one which appeals to a new populace, an art of a new age, whose coarser habit of mind stimulates a powerful but coarser genius.
Why should there have been a new age ? It was a period of crisis in Tokugawa afiairs. The cleavage between the aristocratic and the plebeian strata of Japanese life, which had become placidly conscious of itself in the days of Genroku, now threatened a moral, a social, if not a political disruption. The new factors of popular education,— art, prints, illustrated books, the theatre, novels, contact with the Dutch at Nagasaki, — all had stimulated a spirit of inquiry and of unrest which had penetrated back in investigation to the facts of the Sho- gun's usurpation ; which wrote new, popular histories of the national life ; which gave plays and novels a semi-political aim. This deeper wave of self-consciousness on the part of the people was met by the authorities with sterner repressions. The better elements that might have drifted into improving the popular standards in pleasure and in art were driven out by a stricter censorship. There was thus a sort of natural, or unnatural selection which tended to isolate and give prominence to the coarser side of the popular feeling. If the issue were squarely made between Confucius and rank demoralization, there was little resource for the commoner but to choose the latter. Thus there arose a sort of alliance between the theatre and the houses of pleasure on the one hand, and the disaffected among the literary and political agitators upon the other. Men, great men who sowed the seed of the revolution which ripened in 1868, had to flee for asylum, not to Buddhist temples, but to the labyrinths of Yoshiwara, where, in the care of a romantic love lavished upon them by its then highly cul- tivated hetaircB, they could print and disperse, from their hidden presses, seditious tracts which set the heart of a nation on fire. It was not the ideals of a ripe self-consciousness, such as Kiyonaga had attempted ; it was a struggle of living desires against womout con-
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ventions and hopeless tyrannies. Hence, tiie two phases of a new Ukioye art— its pressure outward to fuller scientific realisms, and its frank recreations in the vulgarities of its surroundings. This passing phase of affairs Utamaro well knew. Himself frequently an inmate of Yoshiwara, he knew the authors, the agitators, the female intriguers, the pet actors and wrestlers, writers of cheap novels, cutters of vulgar prints,— all this feverish life he breathed ; of it, so far as Ukioye allowed him, he became an exponent.
Yet Utamaro had been originally reared in a different nest. He had been a pupil of the more fastidious Sekiyen, an artist who devotes himself to fine book illustrations, and who, as his other name of Toyofiisa attests, had been probably a fellow pupil with Toyoharu of the veteran Ishikawa Toyonobu. Sekiyen was, too, a splendid painter ; and Utamaro' s earliest achievements were in strong brush-work, at which time he took from his master the name Toyoaki. It is interesting to notice that both of our remain- ing satraps have borne the name "Toyo." Toyoaki painted, at first Kano, or Chinese subjects ; but soon after 1780 his attention was drawn to Kiyonaga's growing success. From 1782 to 1785, now dropping the name Toyoaki, he made a series of experiments on print- designing, approximating more and more to Kiyonaga's manner, which he did not perfectly assimilate until 1786 or 1787. After Kiyonaga's withdrawal, Utamaro carried his style to richer and more lavish com- position ; crowding figures together in truer perspective, finishing the landscape details with more naturalism, exhibiting for the moment, in color as well, the power of a supreme master. But in a few years more the Kuansei decay of exaggerated proportions was upon him, a desire for strained attitudes, bizarre combinations, long sweeps of drawn line in drapery more picturesque than dignified. It is this looser and exaggerated style of the day which gave Utamaro oppor- tunity to follow his somewhat wayward genius. His treatment of such themes is more creative, more free than Yeishi's or Toyokuni's. It is this somewhat unhealthy sestheticism, too, which has influenced modem French and other art in its effort to free itself from Western conventionality. In short, Utamaro was a Parisian of his day, a thorough " degenerate " of the end of the last century, who no doubt was cut to pieces by many a Confucian Nordau. All this Utamaro- ness of Utamaro comes in after the year 1796, on which some of the European authorities would have it that he died. The truth is that Utamaro went up on the wave of dolichocephalic, spindle-legged monstrosities to its Kiowa culmination in 1801, and came down again into the awkward and short-legged proportions of Bunkwa. There has been great talk among collectors and dealers of a second Utamaro, and I find that they ascribe many of Utamaro' s important works to this unimportant successor ; but, if the carefully dated list of works
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here exhibited is studied, it will be seen that there is complete con- tinuity in modification of head-dress, proportion, color, costume, com- position, and handwriting in the signature, from his Kiyonaga days to his last most outlandish styles which have been considered most typical of Utamaro the second. While I do not say that there was no such latter man, nor deny that there are books which set Utamaro's death at all dates between 1796 and 18 10, the testimony of the prints themselves is indisputably that he worked down very nearly to the last named date. In this way he came into full contact with the rising genius of Hokusai, who, while he absorbed much from Utamaro, soon distanced the latter in the vigor and the variety of his realism.
In this painting we have an almost unique example of Utamaro'* early painting, in the style of his master, Sekiyen, contemporary with the now, to us, ancient Koriusai, earlier than Kiyonaga' s illumina- tion ; a work strong in great qualities of drawing and in its treatment of grays, but as yet unconscious of all the influences that are to deter- mine the later manifestations of its genius. It is signed Utamaro Toyoaki. In some works of this day he signs Toyoaki alone.
306. Utamaro About 1781.
Large color print.
Assisting at the toilet.
Here we see one of our artist's earliest prints. It has all the character- istics of his painting as revealed in the next number. It is one of the most lavish and ambitious and glorious prints ever designed, but in a transition style that could not last.
307. Utamaro. About 1781.
Painting on a kakemono.
Girls, and child frightened by mouse.
Here Utamaro's brush power is shown in the original strokes. The color, too, is intense, and unlike anything else. The drawing of the pattern so as to exhibit relief is remarkable. The figures stand for- ward with real presence. In some respects no later work of this versatile artist is as fine. Utamaro comprises a whole host of schools locked up in his single and not over-long career, of which schools or manners this is already the second. It shows strong traces of Kiyo- naga' s influence ; if it were the work of an older man, it and the preceding print would almost threaten Kiyonaga with rivalry.
308. Utamaro About 1782.
Small color print.
Girls warming themselves at a Kotatsu. This print, if it be indeed by Utamaro, as seems probable, has suc- ceeded well in amalgamating some of Kiyonaga's strongest qualities with his own.
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309.
3IO.
3"
UTAMARO About 1785.
I^arge color print.
Three very tall girls by a river.
But in this print Utamaro seems to have tried a very different sort of experiment ; indeed, one not so very unlike the long-legged style which he tried again fifteen years later. Even Kiyonaga's work of 1785 is very tall ; and here Utamaro dropped the thick-stroke of his brush which had characterized previous work, and tried a delicate hair-line not at all like his own or Kiyonaga's. The result is something inter- esting, but weak and transitional.
Utamaro About 1787.
Kakemonoye.
Seeking shelter from a shower.
Here Kiyonaga's manner is more fully mastered, but there are traces
of the mood of weak effeminacy.
Utamaro About 1788.
I^arge color print.
Man with two girls in a garden. But in this experiment something of the well-known Utamaro manner appears. It is a strong composition in Kiyonaga's style, but with a richer landscape backgroimd. It is one of his most splendid works.
. Utamaro About 1789.
Set of two color prints. Ladies travelling in a kago.
, Utamaro About 1790.
I^arge color print.
Night scene on the river.
I<ent by George W. Vanderbilt of New York.
The absorption of the Kiyonaga manner is now as complete as it will
ever be.
314. Utamaro About 1792.
Large color print.
Group of girls in an interior. This is one piece of Utamaro's most remarkable triptych. The year 1792 seems to have been one of very rich achievement at the hands of Kiyonaga's followers. Shuncho, Yeishi, Toyokuni and Utamaro seem to have done their ripest work in it. Here there is a new abandon of pose in remarkable perspective groupings, whose architec- ture and screen-work are finely drawn.
315. Utamaro About 1792.
Large color print.
Group and interior. This is another of the same triptych, only it appears in a scale of
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312
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coloring different from usual. In some prints of this subject, as here, red as a beautiful rose predominates. In others, as in the first, its place is taken by a powerful black. This, for color, is about the most brilliant of any single-sheet print of Utamaro I have ever seen.
316. Utamaro About 1792-
Triptych.
Group in an interior, dancing, with garden in the distance.
Fortunately we can here exhibit the whole triptych of which we have just described two portions. A comparison of the section on the left with No. 315 will show well the variety of effect which these designers can produce with a single set of blocks. On the whole, we think this the finest work of Utamaro in the Kiyonaga manner.
317. Utamaro About 1794.
lyarge color print.
Bust of girl.
318. Utamaro About 1795.
I^arge color print.
I^arge head of girl. In this print and the preceding we mark a gradual elongation in the head, which is characteristic of the new Kuansei manner. At the same time the top-knot at the back of the head is growing decidedly in size.
Utamaro Dated 1795.
I^arge color print.
Group by the temple gate. The change is now more manifest. The heads are nearly twice as long as wide. The large top-knot seems to overshadow the whole head even with its two side wings. The necks become small, the shoulders narrow. Fortunately this print has that rare thing, a date, which enables us to determine chronologically the fashion of 1795 in the midst of a current of rapid change.
Utamaro About 1796.
I^arge color print.
Eagle on a tree. At this date Utamaro issued some of his finest books, illustrated with drawings of birds and flowers and animals in colors. This single print is almost as strong as a painting in ink by Sesshu.
Utamaro About 1797.
Triptych.
Girls at toilet.
Utamaro' s types, through their accuracy and multiplicity, give us the best series from which to determine the yearly styles from 1792 on-
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319
320
321
ward. To them we have to refer parallel determinations in the case of Yeishi, Toyokuni, and even Hokusai. This is the very centre of the distinctive Utamaro manner. It is not merely that the types are unnatural ; it is that they betoken an interest in the bizarre and the slovenly. All that I have said of this rapid degeneration which Utamaro leads is here typified. The exaggerated top-knot is now- puffing into a balloon which seems to outweigh the whole head.
322. Utamaro About 1798.
I/arge color print.
Girls under a wisteria arbor.
lycnt by Clarence Buckingham of Chicago. Who can deny a certain kind of beauty and charm to this character- istic print ? In the faces there is still a trace of Kiyonaga, as if his style had been distorted in a bad mirror. The eyes have become short slits, the nose as long as a horse's, the mouth not big enough to swal- low the ladies' pipe, the arm hardly twice as thick as its stem. The balloon has become as big as a modem sleeve, and seriously challenges comparison with a neighboring lantern. What I mean by the loose- ness of drawing can be seen in the flabby folds about the neck. The ladies look as if their clothes were tumbling off. One wonders, too, what sort of ungainly thing they are carrj'ing in their obis. And yet the technical beauties of the print and its handling of color are as fine as ever. But in the realism of the woollen mat, which is actually printed with mixed fibres like felt, we see the cloven foot.
323. Utamaro About 1798.
Painting on a panel.
Girl writing a letter.
324. Utamaro About 1799.
Large color print.
Girl as Daimio looking at Fujiyama.
Ivcnt by Charles J. Morse of Chicago. What fine out-of-door compositions Utamaro can concoct out of such queer proportions is here manifest. The very looseness of the drawing leads to queer, large spaces that can be broadly filled with black, white, and red. Set these values finely against pines and a graded sky, and you have a vivacity of picturesque efiect which is decidedly taking. How much Hokusai drew from Utamaro' s manner in these respects, we shall soon see. There are prints of Hokusai which, if unsigned, might easily be mistaken for such Utamaros as this.
325. Utamaro About 1800.
Triptych.
Three belles with background of Hoo.
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326. Utamaro About 1801.
I<arge color print.
Two very tall girls at temple door.
Here we reach the extremity of proportion. Though the head proper is about three times as high as it is wide, yet the whole figure is about twelve times as high as these heads. The fabulous yards of dress- goods required to clothe these giantesses give Utamaro's pen a mag- nificent opportunity of running away with itself and getting lost somewhere in the labyrinth of the skirts.
327. Utamaro About 1802.
Painting on a panel.
Court lady with a dog. This remarkably careful painting is atmost indistinguishable in touch and in color from some of Hokusai's contemporary work. Had it not been signed I should probably have criticised it to be a Hokusai.
328. Utamaro About 1802.
Painting on a panel.
Lent by George W. Vanderbilt of New York. Girl coming from the bath, and another fanning her Hibachi. But a triumph in painting, all his own, is shown in this panel. The freedom, the picturesque sash, the frank rendering of vulgar natures, the superb drawing and coloring of the checked bath-robe are all so masterly that a French artist of the present day might envy them, and Hokusai himself hardly surpass them.
329. Utamaro About 1803.
Kakemonoye.
Man hiding under a girl's sleeve. And now begins the descent toward Bunkwa. It is a new phase of Utamaro. The heads are still a broad oval, though the bodies are shortening. But there is now a hint of that later well-known Uta- maro manner in which he gives us so many compositions of large heads and busts.
330'
Utamaro About 1804.
Large color print.
Man and woman under an umbrella.
Ivcnt by Clarence Buckingham of Chicago. Here is a splendid specimen of later Utamaro work. After the excess and riot of Kiowa, though the balloon top-knot is still large, the style seems sobriety itself. But there is now a strongly marked slant in the slit eyes, which, with the long, angular nose and thin cheek, gives us an unpleasant type of face quite unUke Kiyonaga's. This change seems enormous when one marks its extremes ; but its phases have slid into one another imperceptibly.
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331- Utamaro. About 1804.
lyarge color print.
Boy, giri, and cherry blossoms.
332. Utamaro About 1805.
I^arge color-print.
Disembarking.
What picturesque out-of-door effects Utamaro can get with this new style are here disclosed.
333. Utamaro 1805.
Ivarge color print.
Silkworm culture. Utamaro here tries an experiment in color, too, in which purples, yellows, and blacks shall strike the chord.
334. Utamaro About 1805.
Triptych.
Three groups under cherry-trees.
If No. 316 be Utamaro's finest triptych in his earlier manner, this can perhaps be said to be the finest in his later. In no other does he give us such a three-movement symphony in the new colors. His masses are almost disdainfully angular. There is no question of grace, yet there is great force in their filling with flat values. The wings at the sides of the hair remain much as they have been for the last ten years ; but the size of the balloon is subsiding. On the cen- tral girl is here a fine specimen of the two-lobed back-knot, which seems all along to have been optional as a substitute for the balloon. The work of these years, 1804-05, is so distinctive, that it seems almost to reach a new aesthetic culmination on the downward slope of decay
334A. Utamaro. About 1806.
I,arge color print.
I^arge heads of girls.
Here is the well-known Utamaro type of composition in large heads and busts. The forehead above the eyebrows has become both ab- surdly short and narrow. The wings now take on a new shape, that of Bunkua, in which the lower edge is a convex, rather than a con- cave curve.
335. Utamaro. About 1807.
Large color print.
Girls gathering persimmons. The Bunkua shape of the wings is becoming more marked ; about evenly convex now on upper and lower edges, swollen out half way between base and tip, the sharp point of the tip coming opposite to
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the centre of the base. This is a most picturesque treatment of a familiar grouping.
336. Utamaro. About 1810.
Triptych.
Girls on the sea-shore. Here is a work in the very latest style of those signed Utamaro. It can hardly be of earlier date than 1809. It has all the characteristics of the extremely debased style— face, form, proportion, and coarse patterning — which are to rule in the coming age. It is inconclusive to point to its manifest inferiority to earher works by this master, and say that, therefore, it is by another hand. The works of all masters who pass through this trying period manifest a parallel descent ; Toyo- kuni, Toyohiro, Yeizan, Kunisada, in short, everyone but Hokusai, and he excepted only because his genius was exactly suited to make something fine out of it, as Utamaro's had been for the proportions of 1797. Every single difference between this print and the last can be shown for a parallel interval in the works of all these men. Had Utamaro lived and worked to this date, it is a priori certain that this is just about the kind of work he would have produced. Surely there is no one of his other many pupils capable of such originality, such brilliancy, such coloring. And yet it was unquestionably a case of inevitable decay imposed upon all artists by conditions partly external. The curve of ascent is hopeful, and artists die at their strongest. But the curve of descent is pathetic, and artists' reputa- tions are eclipsed without influence upon a future which is destined to be different in its still greater hopelessness.
337 Utagawa Toyokuni. About 1786.
Kakemonoye. Actors.
We have now come to the last of the three lords of Kuansei. Toyo- kuni, the greatest pupil of Utagawa Toyoharu, derives his name from that ancient Toyonobu, friend and successor of the great Okumtura, who became the point of divergence for so many subsequent lines. Toyokuni had this advantage over his two great rivals, that he was already trained in a style not remote from Kiyonaga's. His change of allegiance to the latter was no great strain. Thus in this early piece we find something both ripe and sweet, blending normally fac- tors from Toyoharu, Shunsho, and Kiyonaga.
Toyokuni' s genius is less wayward and aggressive than either Yeishi's or Utamaro's. It delights rather in graceful groupings than in strong situations ; at least this is the case with his designs other than for actor prints. His compositions are rather static than dy- namic, if one may be allowed the phrase. As a colorist he fairly holds his own, although he displays no marked originality.
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What is peculiar about him is that he now takes up the line of actor designing which Kiyonaga had for a few years snatched from the hands of the effete Shunsho. Yet it cannot be said that Toyokuni greatly enriched the series. His prints of actors in costume, which are legion, are, for the most part, coarse and careless, and betray in new evidence the fall in popular taste. Where, in this line, he makes a new departure, is in introducing the personalities of actors off the stage, frequently in combination with women, on picnic or boating parties.
Another claim to distinction is that Toyokuni lies in the most direct line of family descent in the history of Ukioye. His great pupils, Kunisada and Kuniyoshi, remain leaders down to the middle of the century ; and Kuniyoshi's pupil, Yoshitoshi, has only just died, the acknowledged head of Ukioyeshi. Toyokuni's brother Toyohiro is not merely his alter-ego, but an original designer, whose work, how- ever, we shall here class with Toyokuni's. His fame half depends upon being the teacher of the great Hiroshige, a man who much later will dispute the leadership of Ukioye' s last Renaissance with Kuni- sada and Hokusai.
338. Toyokuni. About 1789.
Triptych.
Interior of a fan-shop. This triptych is one of the most stately and satisfactory of all Toyo- kuni's in the Kiyonaga manner. It is like a group of exquisitely colored statuary on an early Renaissance "fagade. The disposition of the dark and light, too, is as elegant as a Greek vase ; while the color sings, perhaps, his finest duet between lilac and black. No one manages the head-dress of this day with such restraint as Toyokuni. In no print is there a more adequate representation of the interior of a great shop.
339. Toyokuni. About 1791.
Large color print.
I^adies behind a screen. Undoubtedly a detached section of a triptych, this piece shows us the early Kuansei type so marked in Shuncho's compositions. The trees of the distant garden are drawn in a clear outline, semi-European in curve, which is derived from the Dutch through the medium of his master Toyoharu.
340. Toyokuni. About 1792.
I^arge color print. Yoshiwara in cherry time.
341. Toyokuni About 1792.
I,arge color print.
Yoshiwara in cherry time. This and the preceding are two sections of a pentaptych in which
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Toyokuni executed some of his richest work. It shows the main street of Yoshiwara in the time of cherry-blossoms, which cut in fine pinks against the solid greens of pines, through whose openings are seen portions of porticos and balconies. Richly-clad groups move , through the foreground resplendent in fine purples, centered in dark ochreish reds. All trace of the beni scale of coloring is carefully eliminated. The almost unique thing about these pieces is that no patch of sky whatever is shown therein, the whole composition being solidly built up of the local forms and colors of things.
342. Toyokuni. About 1794.
Triptych.
Dream of rats.
In this triptych the pressure of the Kuansei degeneration has already melted a Httle of the stateliness out of Toyokuni's figures. He is forced by the very exigencies of fashion to look a little like Utamaro.
343. Toyokuni. About 1795.
Large color print.
On the balcony at night. But in this piece he declares open rivalry with Utamaro, for it is an original and vivacious grouping of willowy forms and plum colors.
344. Toyokuni. About 1795.
Large color print.
Ladies at a shooting-match.
Lent by Charles J. Morse of Chicago.
Here, in returning to primary tones, the red of beni against rich land- scape blues and greens, Toyokuni achieves something strange by avoiding the strangenesses of every one else. Compare this drawing of figure and head with Utamaro' s of the same date, in order to determine the latter's Toyokuni analogue.
344A. Utagawa Toyohiro. About 1795.
Painting on a kakemono. Group of very tall girls.
345. Toyokuni. About 1795.
Large color print.
Ladies under cherry blossoms. Another piece from the same triptych.
345 A. Utagawa Toyohiro. About 1795.
In this rare painting we have the unusual composition of many tall, slim figures, in perfectly parallel composition, but the colors are so finely diversified in hue, as in shade, that we feel no monotony.
346. Toyokuni ^^°^^ ^796.
Large color print.
In Yoshiwara streets.
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347- ToYOKUNi. About 1797.
I^arge color print.
Boats on the Bay of Yedo.
How finely these quiet figures look out from a bridge in the Shiba district of Yedo, over a canal's mouth, upon the yellow waters of the town's great bay, where floats its ever crowded flotilla !
348. ToYOKUNi 1798.
Triptych.
I^adies playing in the snow. Toyokuni's most brilliant triptych in frankly primary coloring. In no other print of Ukioye is thick, solid beni used with such a perfect tinting of rose. The white of the snow contrasts brilliantly. Com- pare the drawing and the hair-dressing with the 1798 types of Yeishi and Utamaro.
349. ToYOKxmi AND ToYOHiRO About 1800,
Triptych.
Group in temple grounds. Mark the long oval faces and the impossible length of bodies.
350. Utagawa Toyohiro About 1801.
I<arge color print.
Girl in the snow.
Lent by Howard Mansfield of New York. This is the finest and most original design by Toyohiro I have ever seen, expressing something in the line and feeling different from Toyokuni.
351. ToYOKxmi About 1803.
I^arge color print.
Tall girls going to a bath.
I^nt by Howard Mansfield of New York.
352. Toyokuni About 1803.
lyarge color print.
Tall girls after the bath. In this print and the preceding, which are two of a triptych, Toyokuni shows us a new type in which the coarse heads, pointed wings of the hair, and firm angular lines show his disposition to compete valiantly with Utamaro for highest honors. Indeed, it can be said that this later work of Toyokuni, if not his most beautiful, is his strongest; and in virtue of this strength, combined with Utamaro's, we can say that the year 1804 in some sense witnesses a momentary Renaissance, that is, the invention of a self-consistent style, freed from all useless reminiscence of Kiyonaga, as from all exaggerated conceit.
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3S3.TOYOKUNI About i8o5.
Triptych. ^
Actors and belles in river boats.
In these portraits of well-known actors, enjoying themselves with a boating party, Toyokuni bluffly asserts a coarseness corresponding with contemporary taste.
354. Toyokuni About 1806.
I,arge color print.
Actor in a female part with plant.
Yet here, in another actor portrait, we have one of his sweetest Bunkua female types, with its long, swollen, and pointed hair.
355- Toyokuni About 1807.
I^arge color print. Girls in the country.
The same type of face here recurs. Compare it with Utamaro's girls of the same date.
356. Toyokuni About 1809.
Large color print.
Fashionably dressed belle.
In beautiful coloring of the flashy costume, backed by a pale rose sky, we see the completed oval and homely face, and the exaggerated draperies foretelling of the utter degeneration. It is perhaps a finer use of its material than Utamaro's in No. 336. With it Toyokuni disappears from our view, to be continued later, almost without a break, by the series of his pupil Kunisada.
357. Sharaku • . . . . About 1797.
Ivarge color print.
Actors. This artist, so repulsive in his odd treatment of actors, ofiFers new evi- dence, if any were needed, that Kiyonaga, had he persisted in design- ing, would soon have stifled in a fetid atmosphere. And yet this arch-purveyor of vulgarities and degraded types has been hailed by some Western connoisseurs as a divine genius.
358. Zatsushika Hokusai About 1782.
Kakemonoye, signed Katsu Shunro.
Girl dreaming. At last we come to the man of whom the European estimate has been expressed in terms amounting to panegyric. Not only has he been called the greatest designer of Ukioye, but the greatest Japanese artist of all time. Others, and especially all his own countrymen outside of the classes to which he catered, have condemned him as coarse, unin- spired, and demoralizing. There is some truth on both sides. He
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was bom an artist, without question. The world danced in fresh pictures before his vision ; and to see for him was to depict. He drew a greater variety of things, more rapidly, and more vitally, than any other artist of his day ; he saw pictorial relations freshly, and created them with individuality and spontaneity. This power over line, notan, and color was almost endless when he chose to exercise it. There is nothing out of which he could not make a composition. His illustrated books together compose an encyclopaedia of the world. And yet he never rose to the level of those great ideas which have made of Oriental civilization a force that can never die out of human culttue ; ideals of refinement, harmony, restraint, brotherhood, conse- cration, literary fastidiousness, the incommensurability of spirit with matter ; scorn of money, of worldly advantage, of any slavery to a mere means. His was a world cut off from all standards, except the intensity of its own impressions, of its pleasures. No artist ever so revelled childishly, genially, humorously in pure externaUty. ^stheti- cally, too, his pictorial ideas, though many and striking, are not generally of the highest, the most inward quahty. We cannot define what, in music, enables us to recognize the inner superiority of a theme, say of Beethoven as contrasted with Berlioz. One may be as musical as the other, and yet be not charged with some nameless perfection. So, in pictorial ideas, line and color themes, among those that are truly artistic, there is an endless difference in rank. What constitutes it, who can say ? And yet human consciousness is constructed to recognize it unerringly. So in Hokusai, there is no lack of solid artistic construction ; but in his themes we miss some last perfection of fibre, some inner tempering, some unfathomable depth, something which, in Uterature, constitutes the very poetry of poetry ; something that tones the soul like a bird's note at morning, makes it innocent and fragrant like a wild flower, pure as a child, of diamond texture, concentrating and flashing lights that no merely mortal eye hath seen.
And yet we have to admit that, in this very worldly side of his genius, lay Hokusai's peculiar power. This was the supreme oppor- tunity of becoming the mouth-piece of a generation. His middle age fell on a date, between 1800 and 1820, in which, as we have seen, the lower world of Yedo had surrendered itself to its own impulses, steeped itself in excesses, lowered its standards, defied all idealisms. That an artist should arise who could make of this very degraded material the starting point for fresh creative flights, give it, as it were, a pseudo- ideality abstractly assthetic, is a remarkable phenomenon. Hokusai is the only man who can make out of the large-headed, coarse- featured, glaring-eyed, slovenly- dressed, short-legged woman of 1812, something positively charming and picturesque. Hence we say of him that he did what he could to arrest the downward course of taste
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and art in evil days. Were it not for him the early years of our cen- tury would be almost a disgrace to Ukioye.
It is interesting to think that Hokusai's long life of ninety years covers the whole culmination of the Ukioye, as well as its fall. Bora about seven years after the death of the octogenarian, Okumura Masanobu, it is literally true that the combined lives of these two men witnessed the total career of the art of printing, from start to finish, from Moronobu to Kuniyoshi. No artist ever had as many styles as Hokusai, or as many names. His career is protean ; he turns up, a new being, in every age. Powerfully affected by each new genius with whom he comes in contact, and absorbent as a sponge, he nevertheless trans- forms what he borrows in the alembic of his own masculine personality. He is always Hokusai. His Japan and Japanese do not look like any other artist's. They are charged with a Hokusai mannerism, though in many phases. Shunsho, Kiyonaga, Utamaro, Sori, Kunisada, Hiroshige, Torin, have successively left marks upon him ; yet he has translated their inscriptions into language of his own. But instead of describing these qualities beforehand, we shall let them demonstrate themselves in a study of his works. "We will only say of him, of his position in history, that, as Hartmobu is the master par excellence of Meiwa, Koriusai of Anyei, Kiyonaga of Temmei, and Utamaro of Kuansei, so in the same sense Hokusai can be regarded as the lord of Kiowa and Bunkua, 1801 to 1818.
Born probably in 1759, as a boy he must have delighted ia Haruno- bu's first nishikiye. During Anyei he became a pupil in the actor- school of Shunsho, from whom, like most of the disciples, he took the name Katsukawa, and the syllable Shun in his artistic sobriquet of Shunro. Actor prints, so signed, of the last of Anyei have been met with ; but in the exceedingly rare print of this number we wit- ness an interesting work of about his twenty-third year, in which the quaUties of the Shunsho school are combined, as in those of most of his contemporaries, with an attempt to make a transition to the manner and the physiognomy of Kiyonaga in the days of the latter's culminating power. It is not remarkable as a color-composition, but it already reveals independent power of drawing and of line con- struction.
359. Hokusai, signed Shunro About 1790.
Ink proof, before colors.
Chinese boys disputing over a game. This piece is important and rare in four respects : first, that it is an ink proof ; second, thatitshowsHokusai'scompletemastery of Kiyon- aga' s manner ; third, that it is his first representation of children, in which subject he afterwards achieves such striking success ; and fourth, that it reveals a wealth of supple line and of line composition hardly inferior to Kiyonaga's.
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359A- HiSHiGAWA SoRi About 1796.
I^arge painting on kakemono.
Group of girls and child. A comparison with Utamaro's work will reveal that, after Kiyonaga's withdrawal, Hokusai fell strongly under the influence of the rising Utamaro. All the growing exaggerations of proportion are reflected in his work. Up to 1796 or 1797 he has still signed himself " Shunro " ; but now we find him using the signature " Sori." As to the existence of an independent artist, Sori, from whom Hokusai derived style and name, the evidence is doubtful. Paintings and prints are met with signed " Hishigawa Sori," " Tawaraya Sori," " HiakurinSori," " Sori," and " Hokusai Sori." In the lack of trustworthy documents we must look to internal evidence ; and here it seems tolerably clear that most of these signatures are by a single hand, and used over com- mon seals. It is customary with dealers now to speak of them all as "Hokusai"; and there can be little doubt that most of them are indeed by his hand. The chief doubt lies with the work of " Hishi- gawa Sori," of which this is the most splendid specimen I have ever seen. If there be a Sori, master of Hokusai, this is indeed he. The student must judge for himself whether this be not, after all, another of Hokusai' s many phases. It has a free, realistic sweep of line, and a breadth of solid, opaque color, quite tmlike anything which, has before appeared, but to which the pictorial work of both Utamaro and Hokusai now practically approximates. Whether it be the revolu- tionary work of Hokusai himself, or of his tmknown, mysterious master, it is of equal interest.
360. Hokusai, signed Sori. About 1796.
Painting on a kakemono.
Young Daimio with a fan. This sketch, undoubtedly by Hokusai, is one of his most powerful and freest bits of drawing, showing already absolute mastery of the new manner.
361. Hokusai, signed Sori About 1797.
Paintings on a pair of kakemono.
Girls playing battledore at New Year's. In this fine pair of paintings the rough strength and picturesque- ness of Hokusai's Sori manner in color work is well shown. Nothing with such dash and breadth of blended tones has before been done in Ukioye.
362. Hokusai, signed Sori About 1797.
I,arge color print.
Girls watching fishermen on the bay.
lyent by George W. Vanderbilt of New York. Here is a print which corresponds to Hokusai's early Sori painting.
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His power to render the infinity of atmosphere with a few flat tones, perfect in texture and value, is marvellous.
363. HoKusAi, signed Sori About 1798.
Very wide color print.
The ferryboat.
In this print there is an approximation to Utamaro, both in figure, proportion, and in artistic quality.
364. HOKUSAI About 1800.
I^arge color print.
Faggot girls coming down from the mountain.
In this magnificent print we see the ripening style of the man who now, at once, rises from his Sori manner to that which makes him lord of the age, and now first assumes the name through which his power shall be blazoned to all ages. Combined breadth and delicacy of atmospheric effect can hardly go farther.
365. HoKUSAi About 1802.
Kakemonoye.
Group of wild street dancers.
366. HoKUSAi About 1804.
Painting on a large eight-panelled screen.
Group of women of all types.
We have already seen that the early years of the nineteenth century show, in some sense, the self-conscious culmination of a new style adapted to the freer taste of the day, as shown in the work of both Utamaro and Toyokuni. If anything more were needed to prove it an epoch for creation, it would be this broadest, largest, most powerful, most unexpected, and most marvellous of all Hokusai's works. I must confess that, before I had seen it, and when I wrote the Hokusai catalogue for my exhibition of his work at the Boston Art Museum, I was ignorant of the supreme height he could reach. Vulgar or other- wise, the startling, creative quality in some of the line, dark and light, and color ideas rises well-nigh to the point of sublimity. The figures, of life size, give an opportunity, rare in Japanese art, of direct com- parison with the great mural and portrait painting of Europe. There is no master of the latter, from Durer or Titian, through Velasquez, down to Sargent and Whistler, who would not have hailed this work as one of the world's transcendent masterpieces. Not only do the figures impose themselves with real presence, like Matahei's, but each figure is a fresh study of action, costume, and sentiment. The great sweeps of the broad brush are utterly without manner, yet vital ; and in the varying degrees of their depth, organic in expressing the qualities of relief, and texture of stuffs. How magnificently the last quality is shown in the outlines of the black upon the left-hand, kned-
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ing figure ! How, too, in gorgeousness of line-sweep the standing figure on tlie right resembles, yet far surpasses, Utamaro ! In notan the play is hardly less broad. The groups at the extreme ends are combinations of line and notan idea, hardly less wonderful than those of Okumura at his greatest. In color, too, there are sumptuous pas- sages, especially in the two groups just mentioned. Such combinations of quiet blues and browns and greens, as on the left ; such contrast of broad blacks and reds, as on the right, have not before been seen. In the use of pattern, again, Hokusai combines beauty and expression. What could be more superb than the flossy storks and clouds upon the black satin, or the dead-brown checks against the changeable green ? Or, again, of the blue cotton fabrics in one of the standing figures on the left. The branch of cherry blossoms, set in the bundle of faggots by the girl whose head is covered with a kerchief, is a perfectly S}nnpathetic treatment of this national flower. Lastly, the group of utensils upon the tray is rendered with a directness and force which inclines us to call them unrivalled by any school of still-life painting. In short, this is one of those rare, comprehensive works, in which all knowledge, all life, all power, all feeling, all beauty are combined. It is hardly possible that any greater work of Hokusai yet remains for the world to discover. It would require weeks of study to exhaust its interest and value.
367. Hokusai About 1806.
Painting on a kakemono.
Heron on the post of a bridge.
368. Hokusai, signed Taito About 1810.
Painting on a kakemono.
Young girl under a cherry-tree.
Lent by Ernest F. Fenollosa of Boston. Yet, for a small painting, and for pure beauty and sentiment, this piece rises for a moment to a more interior value. It is not merely the ex- treme of instantaneous dash, the power of broad rendering. There is a charm in the very freedom of the girl herself, in the suggestions of the purity of the washes in relation to the purity of the cherries, in a Ituninous sweetness of color, almost unique in Hokusai's work. And this is the very type of girl, in head, in proportion, in slovenly dress- ing, whom other contemporary Ukioyeshi, Yeizan, Yeisen, Kunisada, make so hideous.
369. Hokusai, signed Hokusai Taito About 1813.
Painting on a kakemono.
Girl with a long pipe.
Now, for the first time, appears a certain hardening of Hokusai's style into formality, the beginning of the well-known Hokusai mannerism which marks his later work. Heretofore he has given us a sublima-
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tion of what Utamaro and Toyokuni aimed at. Now he is something entirely new, the very Hokusai of Hokusai.
370. HoKTJSAi, signed Taito About 1815.
Small color print.
I<andscape with bridge.
Here, too, we see the beginning of Hokusai' s peculiar manner inland- scapes. It is contemporary with some of his strongest work in book illustration.
371. Hokusai Probably about 1818.
Painting on a kakemono.
Cock on a drum.
372. Hokusai About 1825.
Painting on a panel.
Group of travellers by a river.
Here appears still a new phase of our master. It is a day when a new love for nature is about to dawn. The excesses of Bunkua are past. Japanese have conceived a passionate love for travelling about in their own beautiful land. It is an age when illustrated guide-books of all famous scenes abound. It is the moment when Hiroshige and Kuni- sada are about to turn single-sheet printing into a glorification in colors of Japanese landscape. From now on Hokusai shares with these two in a sort of triumvirate. It is the last attempt at a Renaissance in the history of Ukioye. Already by the authorities extravagance has been repressed. Sumptuary laws have been passed for the Daimios, the expenses of the Shogun's court have been retrenched, the people turn their attention toward new standards of purity as mirrored in simple, natural beauty.
This is one of the earliest of Hokusai's crowded out-door composi- tions. The details of landscape are drawn in a transitional manner, but the figures already show much of his final form.
373. Hokusai About 1830.
Ivarge color print.
Dragging a net through a stream.
374. Hokusai About 1830.
I^arge color print.
Farming scene in the country. This most careful and brilliantly colored print is the finest of his early series of landscape studies in this form.
375. Hokusai About 1830-35.
Large color print
Daimio walking.
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375 A. HoKUSAi. About 1730,
Painting on a panel. Crabs. A most wonderful painting, showing Hokusai's drawing of animal life.
376. HoKUSAi About 1830-35.
Large color print.
Botan flowers in the wind.
377. HoKUSAi About 1830-35.
I^arge color print.
Men bathing under a waterfall.
378. HoKUSAi - . . . About 1830-35.
I^arge color print.
Washing a horse at 'a waterfall. What is this but pure Japanese Impressionism not inferior in force and beauty to the French variety ?
379. HoKUSAi ■ . - . . About 1835.
Large color print.
View of Fujiyama under a bridge.
Lent by Frederick W. Gookin of Chicago.
380. HoKUSAi About 1835.
Large color print.
Fujiyama with thunder-storm below,
Lent by Frederick W. Gookin of Chicago.
381. HoKUSAi About 1835.
Large color print.
Fuji seen across the ferry.
Lent by Frederick W. Gookin of Chicago.
382. HOKUSAI About 1835.
Large color print.
Fujiyama and boat. In this and the three preceding prints we have specimens of Hoku- sai's famous series of scenes of Fuji. This, perhaps, of all, is the most original and striking. It is, possibly, not too odd to say of its color, that it actually afiects the nerves with a pleasure so keen and strange that its vibrations almost pass into pain, as in hearing some of Chopin's music.
383. HOKUSAI About 1835.
Large color print.
Fujiyama seen through the pines.
106
384. HoEUSAi About 1835.
Large color print.
Fujiyama from the sluiceway. In this brilliant print, and its predecessor, also from the Fujiyama series, we have an ultra impressionism of color. Yet the red horses are not as crimson as Besnard's.
385 and 386. HoKUSAi About 1835.
Paintings on a pair of screens of six panels.
Farming scenes, Fujiyama in distance.
I/cnt by Ernest F. Fenollosa of Boston. These two screens reveal to us the full marvel of Hokusai's later painting, as the large eight-panelled one did of his earlier. He is a new draughtsman, and a new colorist. Here, condensed in a single work, we have the chief themes of the series of the Fuji prints. A representation of life and action in the finished Hokusai convention, they reach the culminating point. On the screen showing Fujisan, the passage of color in the central group of the cloth-beaters is the very richest in the whole range of Hokusai's work. The use of the chrome- like yellow in brilliant stipple on the tree-masses, supporting the cloudy background of spotted gold, gives tone to the warm orange of the sky, and to the cool blue-gray spaces of the marsh and the dis- tance. That retainers of some neighboring squire should set out a- hunting with hawk and dog from this typical Japanese farm-house, where men are rethatching the roof, piles of washed clothes are beaten by the women, and a boy lugs in a basket of egg-plants, while another fashions a grind-stone, is natural enough ; as is also the fact that the itinerant provision dealer should stop for a chat and a pipe with the man who has a circulating library done up in green on his back.
387. Hokusai ^839-
Painting on a kakemono.
Boy on a tree, looking at Fujiyama.
Here is Hokusai's ripe manner at the age of eighty. From this date onward he signs his age upon his paintings.
388. Hokusai ^^46-
Painting on a kakemono.
Vine and beetle.
This must suffice to show us what breadth of crumbling and blended touches Hokusai could wield in his very last manner.
He died at the age of ninety, at a time when the chance of reviving Ukioye in a last Renaissance was passing away in the manifest de- cadence of the powers of Kunisada and of Hiroshige. With his death the history of Ukioye practically closes.
107
389. Hok'kei About 1825,
Ivarge color print.
Girl crossing a bridge.
390. HoKuju About 1835.
I<arge color print.
An island.
391. HoKUBA About 1800.
Painting on a kakemono.
Court lady.
392. Y^iRi. About 1803.
Painting on a wide kakemono.
Girls and river landscape.
393. Yeizan About 1818.
Painting on a kakemono.
Girl under an umbrella. Yeizan is a contemporary of Hokusai, who has the distinction of being almost the latter's only powerful rival between the years 1810 and 1820. The showy loose fashions of the day may, in a sense, be called the style of Yeizan.
394. Utagawa Kunisada. About 1806.
Triptych.
Girls on the seashore.
Lent by Frederick W. Gookin of Chicago. Of the many pupils of Toyokuni, Kunisada is the best known. He continued the work of his master during a long life of many years, down to the middle of the present century. In this very early work of his we notice a style hardly distinguishable from that of Toyokuni. If any one thinks it is his finest work, it is rather because the year's fashion has more dignity, though less realism, than those which follow.
395. KuNiSADA About 1810.
Large color print.
Actor in snow.
Here is the coarse style of 1812, parallel with Yeizan's, which Hokusai used with most satisfactory power.
396. KtmisADA About 1812.
Large color print.
Girls in snow.
397. KuNisADA About 1820.
Painting on a panel.
Girls under cherry trees.
Lent by George W. Vanderbilt of New York. 108
398. KuNisADA About 1825.
Large color print.
Girls at steps in snow. But now a new age, that of landscape, is dawning. Costumes and pro- portions are simpler and more restrained. It is the beginning of what I have called the last Renaissance.
399. KuNisADA About 1830.
Large color-print.
Girl looking over the bay.
Kunisada now reaches that ripeness of style which entitles him to be called, with Hokusai and Hiroshige, one of the triumvirate of Tempo. The landscape background is not inferior in drawing and in color to the pure landscapes of the latter master.
400. Kunisada About 1845.
Large color print.
Daimio in a garden. Later, Kunisada' s style, as Hiroshige' s, became looser and more care- less. The colors are brilliant, but coarser in feeling. This is typical of all the finer Ukioye work between 1840 and i860.
401. Utagawa KuNiYOSHi. About 1814.
Large color print.
Actor tearing snakes. Here is an early actor work of the second great pupil of Toyokuni. It shows the large eyes and coarse features of the day ; but it is very powerful in feeling and execution.
402. KuNiYOSHi. About 1822.
Large color print.
Girls by the river. Here Kuniyoshi becomes for a moment more delicate and refined in drawing.
403. Kuniyoshi About 1835.
Large color print.
Girl in blue.
404. Kuniyoshi About 1840.
Large color print.
Landscape of Lake Biwa with Fuji in the distance. This is the most beautiful of aU Kuniyoshi' s landscapes ; and, in some respects, more rich in color than Hiroshige' s.
405. Keisai Yeisbn ... About 1820.
Large color print.
Girl reading a letter. Yeisen, the greatest pupil of Yeizan, may be called the alter-ego
109
of Kunisada. He is a fine and original fourth, with Kunisada, Kuni- yoshi, and Hiroshige.
406. YeisEn About 1828.
Very large color print.
I^andscape.
I^nt by George W. Vanderbilt of New York, This, though injured, has the finest warm atmosphere of all Ukioye landscapes.
407. Yeisen. ... About 1830.
Large color print.
Temple grounds at Yedo. This is one of his most solidly composed landscapes.
408. Yeisen About 1835.
Large color-print.
Landscape, Fujiyama in distance.
409. Yeisen Abont 1835.
Large color print.
Leading laden cows in the rain.
In this splendid landscape, Yeisen betrays some influence firom Hokusai as well as firom Hiroshige.
410. Yeisen About 1840,
Very large color print.
Carp ascending a waterfall.
411. Yeisen About 1840.
Large color print.
Snow landscape with pines.
412. Hiroshige About 1822.
Large color print.
Girl awakening. We now come to the last important figure in Ukioye history. We have briefly noticed the causes which led to landscape designing. Hiroshige is easily the leader in this movement. In no other school does Japanese landscape receive adequate treatment, except in the contemporary Shijo school of Kioto ; and even in this there is almost no color. Hiroshige is unquestionably one of the greatest and most original of the world's landscape designers. At first a pupil of Toyo- hiro, he soon, as in this early figure composition, reveals new dramatic power. This is really startling in power, making us think, in its in- tense feeling, of Sir Joshua's subject, Mrs. Siddons as the Tragic Muse.
no
413- HiROSHiGS About 1825.
I<arge color print.
Travellers on tlie highroad. I shall not now attempt to follow through the changes in Hiroshige's many landscapes. The dates appended are eloquent enough. Speak- ing generally, his earlier landscapes are his finest ; but there are exceptions to this rule. His accuracy to local detail is so great that travellers in Japan to-day can easily recognize his scenes. No part of this picturesque country escaped his observation ; but he is especially happy in treating the many aspects of his native Yedo. His figures, like those of his great contemporary, Turner, are sometimes hardly more than lay figures, spots in the landscape, yet vigorous in their suggested action. That some of his most delicate landscape efiects can be achieved with flat blocks is a marvel. His work is of special value to our landscape students in the West.
414. HiROSHiGE About 1828.
Ivarge color print.
Travellers at lunch.
415. HrROSHiGE About 1828.
I^arge color print.
Across the marshes.
416. HrROSHiGE ' . . • . About 1828.
l^arge color print.
Porters packing burdens.
417. HiROSHiGB About 1830.
I^arge color print.
Moonlight in Yoshiwara.
418. HiROSHiGE. . • -^bout 1830.
I^arge color print.
In the temple grounds at Shiba.
419. HiROSHiGE About 1830.
Large color print.
Boats in Yedo Bay.
420. HiROSHiGE -A.bout 1832.
Large color print.
Temple garden in spring,
421. HiROSHiGS About 1832.
Large color print.
View on Lake Biwa.
422. HIROSHIGE -A^o"* ^^38.
Large color print.
View of cherry trees at Koganei,
III
423. HiROSHiGB About 1838.
I/arge color print.
River scene with ships.
424. HiROSHiGE About 1838.
Large color print.
River view by moonlight.
425. HiROSHiGE . About 1840.
I^arge color print.
Nihonbashi in snow.
426. HiROSHiGE About 1840.
lyarge color print.
River view at Asakusa.
427. HiROSHiGE. About 1840.
I^arge color print.
Crossing the bridge by moonlight.
428. HiROSHiGE. About 1840.
I^arge color print.
Spring scene.
429. HiROSHiGE. About 1840.
I^arge color print.
Parrot on tree.
430. HiROSHiGE. About 1840.
I^arge color print.
View of Tsukuba mountain.
431. HiROSHiGE. About 1842.
Upright color print.
Canal in snow.
lycnt by Frederick W. Gookin of Chicago.
432. HiROSHiGE. About 1842.
Upright color print.
Spring scene.
I,ent by Frederick W. Gookin of Chicago.
433. HiROSHiGE. About 1842.
Very large color print.
Hawk on a pine branch.
434. HiROSHiGE About 1843.
Very large color print.
Mountain landscape in snow.
Lent by George W. Vanderbilt of New York.
435. HIROSHIGE About 1845.
Very large kakemonoye.
High bridge by moonlight.
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436. HiROSHIGE.
Triptych. "Whirlpools in river.
About 1846.
437. HiROSHIGE. .... Triptych.
View of shore by moonlight.
438. HiROSHIGE. I^arge color print.
River view through a circular window.
439. HiROSHIGE. ... I/arge color print.
Storks and rice fields.
About 1846.
About 1848.
About 1848.
440. HiROSHIGE. About 1848.
Large color print.
Yedo at night. Twilight effects are first adequately rendered in print by this artist. There is something here in feeling which even Hokusai cannot reach.
441. HiROSHIGE. About 1850.
Triptych.
Mountains in snow. In this work, though late, Hiroshige, with simplest color means, and chiefly by his purity of line and mass, reaches almost the point of sublimity in landscape feeling. How superior for the rendering of snow is white paper to painty pigment !
442. HiROSHIGE.
Painting on a panel. River scene in snow.
About 1850.
Lent by George W. Vanderbilt of New York.
443. HiROSHIGE. About 1850.
Painting on a panel.
Autumn view of Fujiyama across a river.
In this painting and the preceding we have the interesting opportunity of studying the master's actual touch. Such works are rare.
444. HiROSHIGE and KUNISADA. Small color print. View at Kanagawa.
About 1830.
"3
445- HiROSHiGE and Kunisada . 1830-
Small color print. Mountain view on the Tokaido. In sucli series as this, the problem of setting colored figures against colored landscape backgrounds is grandly solved by the two masters in conjunction ; and that, too, in a way which suggests comparison with some of the first achievements of modern French art.
446. HiROSHiGE and Kunisada. 1830.
Small color print.
View of fields on the Tokaido.
447. HiROSHiGE and Kunisada 1850.
Triptych.
Gentleman in the plum garden. Even to the end, these two of our triumvirate remain co-workers. How fine late Ukioye work can be, this piece shows. After this there is practically nothing but disintegration, with occasional gleams of traits borrowed from Europe in Kuniyoshi's pupil Yoshitoshi, until the new war prints of last year.
In concluding this somewhat unusually written historical sketch, I have only to say that I hope I have utilized the rare occasion of this exhibition to make it clear how the changing works of these many masters, covering so long a time, classify themselves into periods more or less clearly marked by the broader difierences between their qualities. I have not undertaken to supply from books any biographical details ; only to deduce from the objects themselves the main evidence with regard to the phases of the art, which fifteen years of research among these best of original documents can yield. To summarize : It is clear that the work of Matahei and his successors through the seventeenth century aflbrds a sort of introduction to Ukioye, whose true centre is not reached until Moronobu inaugurates a second period at the century's close. A third period comes in with the eighteenth in the pictorial work of Choshun on the one hand, and the prints of Kiyonobu and Masanobu on the other ; which, in its two phases of ink work and hand- colored prints, lasts down to about 1743, when color-printing in two blocks is invented and practised by the same pair of leaders. This new work may be called the fourth period ; and under it we may include a second phase, after the death of the patriarchs, when their mantle has fallen upon Kiyo- mitsu, Shigenaga, and Toyonobu, who add a third block. But, by 1765, Shigenaga's pupil, Harunobu, inaugurates a fifth movement, that of complete color-printing, in which Toyoharu, Shunsho, and Shigemasa share, as parallel masters, even after Koriusai has taken up the work dropped by Harunobu. About 1780, again, commences a sixth period in the rise to dominance of Kiyonaga, the greatest genius of all ; who is in turn succeeded by the tri-
114
umvirate of Yeishi, Toyokuni, and Utamaro in tlie seventh, between 1790 and 1800. Hokusai succeeds to power in the ninth period, that of utter degradation ; while the tenth and last, of a temporary renaissance through landscape work, is divided between Hokusai, Kunisada, and Hiroshige.
If now I were asked to rank the , greater of these masters by their artistic merit, I might perhaps produce something like the following list : of first rank, five, namely, Matahei, Okumura Masanobu, Harunobu, Kiyonaga, and Hokusai ; of second rank, eight, namely, Moronobu, Kaigetsudo, Kiyonobu, Kiyomasu, Koriusai, Shigemasa, Shuncho, and Utamaro ; and of the third rank, fourteen, namely, Choshun, Shunsui, Shunsho, Toshi- nobu, Mangosaburo, Shigenaga, Toyonobu, Kiyomitsu, Kiyohiro, Toyo- haru, Buncho, Yeishi, Toyokuni, and Hiroshige. Most of the others mentioned in this catalogue would be found in the fourth rank. Beside these the less known men are to be numbered by hundreds.
On the whole we are inclined to award the palm to Kiyonaga, in that he is the central and culminating figure, with ripest mastery over all the technical points of the art of color-designing for prints.
Ernbst Francisco Fbnollosa.
Front matter
The Masters of Ukioye
A COMPLETE HISTORICAL DESCRIPTION OF
JAPANESE PAINTINGS a^d COLOR PRINTS
OF THE GENRE SCHOOL
ERNEST FRANCISCO FENOLLOSA
CURATOR OF THE JAPANESE DEPARTMENT OF THE BOSTON MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS FORMERLY IMPERIAL JAPANESE FINE ARTS COMMISSIONER
AS SHOWN IN EXHIBITION AT
THE FINE ARTS BUILDING
215 WEST 57TH STREET
NEW YORK
JANUARY, 1896
BY
8 WEST 2gTH STREET, NEW YORK 3
h^^l'l^f (^
Copyright, 1896
BY
W. H. KETCHAM
Ube Iftnlcfierbocftet press, 'Bew 'Kocbelte, «. M.
