TOSHIUSAI SHARAKU.TOSHIUSAI SHARAKU.
TOSHIUSAI SHARAKU.
Toshiusai Sharaku is a figure more shadowy than most, even in this region of shadows. The wilful neglect of a public that hated him has folded him in a mystery deeper than the mere accidental obscurations of time. Of his birth and death we know absolutely nothing, nor of the name of his teacher, if he had one. The resemblance between his work and that of Shunyei cannot be fully explained until we know more accurately their relative dates. Kiyonaga'snoble drawing certainly affected his style. The influence of Shunsho upon his colour-schemes is fairly obvious; but we do not know whether this was due to personal contact, or only to familiarity with Shunsho's work. The one indisputable fact about Sharaku is that he was originally a Nō-performer in the troupe of the Daimyo of Awa. The Japanese authorities state that he worked at print-designing only one or two years, somewhere between 1790 and 1795. Dr. Kurth, in his stimulating but somewhat too imaginative volume, "Sharaku," believes that the evidence justifies us in fixing Sharaku's working period as a much longer time—1787 to 1795; but he cannot be said to have wholly proved his case. Whether or not these dates are accurate, we may at least say that Sharaku's years of activity lay chiefly within the early part of the last decade of the eighteenth century.
SHARAKU: THE ACTOR ARASHI RYUZŌ IN THE RÔLE OF ONE OF THE FORTY-SEVEN RONIN.SHARAKU: THE ACTOR ARASHI RYUZŌ IN THE RÔLE OF ONE OF THE FORTY-SEVEN RONIN.Silver background. Size 14 × 10. SignedToshiusai Shakaru ga. Spaulding Collection.Plate 42.
SHARAKU: THE ACTOR ARASHI RYUZŌ IN THE RÔLE OF ONE OF THE FORTY-SEVEN RONIN.Silver background. Size 14 × 10. SignedToshiusai Shakaru ga. Spaulding Collection.
Plate 42.
Sharaku's work consisted entirely of startlingly powerful and ironic portraits of actors, some in the form of large bust-portraits, some in the form of full-length figures ofhoso-yesize, and a few large sheets each containing two full-length figures. Their savage intensity is arresting and unforgettable; it at once drives one to consider what manner of man could have created them.
Sharaku was, as we have said, professionally a member of the Nō-troupe of the Daimyo of Awa. This fact is of far-reaching significance.
The Nō was a highly developed and aristocratic form of lyrical drama, based upon ancient and classical legends; it was full of a poetry and allusivenessthat made it incomprehensible to the populace, who, indeed, had no opportunity to see it; it was as much the exclusive concern of the cultured aristocracy as the private revival of a Greek tragedy is with us to-day. In brocaded costumes, perhaps the treasured reliques of centuries ago, the Nō-dancer appeared upon his empty stage before a hushed audience of nobles—his face masked, as were the faces of the Greek actors, his voice lifted to an unnatural pitch of vibrant chaunting; and with stately motions, elaborately devised steps, and stereotyped gestures, he intoned the rolling strophes of the drama's long and hallowed strain. A complex formalism pervaded every word and step; in no art-form with which I am familiar is an accepted convention, a totally unrealistic medium, so rigidly adhered to as in these Nō-plays.
The Nō-actors were a caste utterly apart from the actors of the common stage. They were the protégés and associates of great nobles who would not, save incognito, appear in the presence of the common actor. The gap between the two classes of actors was as great as that between Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson and a juggler at a fair—one, the inheritor of a distinguished literary tradition, the interpreter of our classic dramatic heritage; the other, a crude beguiler of the populace, with station no higher than the pedlar. Caste-feeling may very well have been rather harsh between the haughty Nō-performers and their despised and ostracized brothers of the gutter.
As we have noted, the Nō-dancer wore a mask; these masks are creations of the greatest interest.They are carved out of wood, frequently with a skill that makes them striking works of art. It is impossible to convey in words the remarkable degree of characterization which they express. The smooth guilelessness of the young girl, the deep wrinkles of the old man, the leer of the rascal, the savagery of the villain, are all in their turn summarized in these haunting representations whose simplicity of outline is matched only by their intensity of effect. Nature seems to speak in them—but a heightened nature, stripped of all incidentals; the very essence of the character of the rôle is revealed to our eyes the instant the actor, wearing his impressive and vivid mask, steps upon the stage.
Bearing these things in mind, we may follow Dr. Kurth ("Sharaku," München, 1910) in his imaginative summary of the probable effects of the calling of a Nō-dancer upon the mind and art of Sharaku:—
"Picture a richly endowed painter—at first only dimly conscious of his powers—as in a mystery-play he treads the consecrated stage in the sacred precincts of a temple of Tokushima or in the shadow of the cryptomerias and firs of the Hachisuka castle—a fantastic mask covering his features, other masked spectres before his eyes—surrounded by the atmosphere of the occult tradition of ancient and lofty dramatic art—while, in the depths of his soul's abysses, chained Titans would storm up to the outer world, and confused pictures of his future creations hover before his spirit, ... and we shall realize that this man, as a painter, must become a dramaturgist.
"And if we summon to our vision the gorgeous stretches of Awa—its chasmy mountains with the forests rustling around them—its picturesque sea-lapped beaches—its sun-drenched groves of oak—its glowing scarlet maples—the brilliant flowers of its Spring—the evergreens of its Winter—then we shall realize that this man, as a painter, must become a colour-dreamer.
"Brooding spirit that he was, he, an Edipus, approached venturously to the Sphinx of passion that peers forth from the faces of men. Uncanny powers lurked in the grotesque furrows and demoniac grimaces of his Nō-masks, but nothing little or shallow—nay, in spite of all grotesqueness, only the significant and symbolic. And then he looked down from his buskined height upon the popular actors—bombastic barn-stormers—greasy low-comedians—louts from nowhere, as the illustrious Harunobu had called them—performers who brought before their gaping audience not, as did he, august things in strangely wonderful guise, but often things far too human in strutting stage-pomp. He looked upon them, a guild not only despised but sometimes even outlawed—a guild that stood on the same plane as the idiotic profession of the wrestler,—a class whose vulgar faces could not hide their swaggering gutter-vanity and their cringing lust for applause behind even the red paint of the ferocious warrior-rôle or the corpse-coloured rice-powder used when aping women. And if we see him thus, we shall understand that this man, as a painter of actors, must eventually become a pitiless satirist."
It was therefore with the colossal and tragic gestures of the Nō-dance in his soul, the distorted and monumental intensity of the Nō-masks in his eyes, and the contempt and irony of the Nō-performer for the common actor in his heart, that Sharaku, coming to Yedo, took up his terrible brush to depict the Yedo actors as he saw them. The resulting series of portraits is surely one of the supreme examples of graphic characterization and devastating contempt that the world has ever seen.
In the earlier portion of Sharaku's work, among which are his large portraits on yellow backgrounds, the originality of the man is already striking enough; but his acid qualities are hardly at their fullest development. Certain of hishoso-yeprints must belong to this first period; in these, after the manner of Shunsho, he devoted his attention chiefly to the attaining of a powerful dramatic rendering of the rôle he was depicting. Strutting Daimyo, beguiling woman, ferocious warrior, shrewd peasant—he made each part move with the vigour and force of the seen stage. Shunsho was never more impressive; and here, in addition, there is in every design a strange distortion of line, a disturbing abnormality of pose, that makes one realize that no mere copyist of Shunsho is at hand.
Then, beginning with an astounding series of twenty-four portraits with mica backgrounds (Plates42,43,44) representing actors in the play of the Forty-seven Ronin, Sharaku's mood changes. He ceases to remind one at all of Shunsho; it is rather the scrutinizing individual characterization of Shunyeithat he recalls. But Shunyei never reached the point to which Sharaku is now coming. The dramatic force, the histrionic illusion of his pictures abates no jot; but beyond it, disturbing lights and movements are lurking. The mighty rôle towers like a shadow before us in its full dramatic sweep; but from the depths of the shadow peers with stealthy glance the indwelling personality of the actor—like a jackal's eyes seen suddenly in a king's tomb. This contradiction—this complex of two utterly antagonistic forces—is one of the miracles of Sharaku's genius: it is an antinomy which he resolves sufficiently to produce an equilibrium, but not enough to take from these portraits the insoluble mystery of two spirits, the tangle of two meanings, the explosive and inscrutable life that makes them unforgettable.
Thus the sweeping rhetoric of the stately rôle and the sudden naturalistic cry of the discovered actor's soul meet in a discord unique, subtly calculated, magnificent, and harrowing. Sharaku pierced deep into the hearts of his sitters to grasp the weak, the grotesque, the pathetic, the tragic; he appraised the lust, the horror, the vacuity that was there, and these qualities he dragged out to the light through the avenues by which he had entered—through the eyes, the lips, the hands—tearing these gates into terrible and distorted breaches eloquent of the booty that had been forced through them. No portraits so blasting as his have ever been created by another; no other hand has so devastatingly shattered the conventional contours of faces to reshape them into the awful images of their own hidden potentialities.
SHARAKU: THE ACTOR ISHIKAWA DANJURO (YEBIZO) AS THE DAIMYO KO NO MORONAO IN THE DRAMA OF THE FORTY-SEVEN RONIN.SHARAKU: THE ACTOR ISHIKAWA DANJURO (YEBIZO) AS THE DAIMYO KO NO MORONAO IN THE DRAMA OF THE FORTY-SEVEN RONIN.Size 14 × 10. Silver background. SignedToshiusai Sharaku ga.Plate 43.
SHARAKU: THE ACTOR ISHIKAWA DANJURO (YEBIZO) AS THE DAIMYO KO NO MORONAO IN THE DRAMA OF THE FORTY-SEVEN RONIN.Size 14 × 10. Silver background. SignedToshiusai Sharaku ga.
Plate 43.
To call Sharaku a realist is a silly, untruthful attempt to muffle in words forces that one does not understand. He was hardly more a realist than Kiyonaga. He saw in the spectacle before him certain elements of beauty and terror; he selected and moulded them into his cunningly devised designs; and the result was as much a creation of the visionary mind—a true idealism—as the pictures of the fairy-tale-telling Harunobu. It is no mere realism, but an insidious dissection and a mordant reconstruction, that is so striking in these works. The most savage efforts of modern caricature are child's play beside Sharaku's disintegrating analysis and his satanic reassembling of features. He does to the face and its concealed passions what Michael Angelo's anatomical figure does to the nerves and muscles—revealing appallingly the secrets of structure and the machinery of power.
Yet, in spite of all the distortions and exaggerations and displacements, Sharaku's satyrical faces live. They have an unnatural and monstrous life—like the life of Gothic gargoyles and fabulous animals, whose parts are brought together into an incredible yet organic creation. Looking upon them, one realizes that for Sharaku beauty meant not sweetness or grace, but vitality—the clench and rending of the earthquake forces of life. He sought no harmonies of sentiment like those of Harunobu; he plunged wholly into a maelstrom of powers whose magnificent surge and flow was to him the sole end and the sole consolation.
He drew no courtesans, no scenes from the dailylife of the people, no festivals, no tea-house gardens by the river; but with a baleful concentration he, the proud master of the esoteric Nō drama, kept his eyes fixed unswervingly upon the pathetic mimes of the vulgar stage—outcasts, common lumps strutting for an hour of glory in gorgeous robes and heroic rôles before a gaping populace. How one longs for one more work from Sharaku's hands—a portrait of himself, seated in the stalls, watching the play at its height! One can almost imagine the peering eyes, the tight lips, the hidden hands....
So far I have spoken chiefly of the large heads of Sharaku. But it must not be forgotten that he produced a number of designs inhoso-yeform that are the very flower of his work. Kurth places certain of these early in Sharaku's career; he is, perhaps, wrong in this, for many of those which he thus dates give evidence of an art so mature and masterful that they must be at least contemporaneous with the Ronin Series. Such are the print of Arashi Ryūzō as an aged noble in robe of black with violet girdle, and the print of Segawa Kikusabrō in robe of olive and purple holding an open fan. In the finest of thesehoso-yethe dramatic force of the composition is so subtle that the element of caricature takes a subordinate place. A lyric mood pervades them. It is impossible to contemplate these figures without a sense, not merely of the irony and contempt which they sometimes embody, but also of the tragic heights on which they move. Lofty conflicts, desperate destinies, immense strainings toward desired goals, immense despairs before impassable barriers—theseare some of the emotions that confront us here. The echo of the tragedy of the Greeks is around them; their gestures seem the shadows of titanic cataclysms. Kiyonaga gave us the gods; Sharaku gives us those who fought against the gods. If it were my fortune to choose, out of the tens of thousands of prints that I have seen, one print which could alone be saved from some impending universal destruction, I am not sure whether I would take Harunobu's flawless "Flute Player," or Kiyonaga's serene "Terrace by the Sea," or that terrible print of Sharaku's, illustrated in both Kurth and the catalogue of the exhibition at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, in which the orange-robed figure of Nakayama Tomisabrō stalks by with an intensity of passion that makes one's flesh creep—a vibrancy of line, colour, and emotion that seems the apogee of beauty and terror.
SHARAKU: THE ACTOR KOSAGAWA TSUNEYO AS A WOMAN IN THE DRAMA OF THE FORTY-SEVEN RONIN.SHARAKU: THE ACTOR KOSAGAWA TSUNEYO AS A WOMAN IN THE DRAMA OF THE FORTY-SEVEN RONIN.Silver background. Size 14 × 10. SignedToshiusai Sharaku ga. Ainsworth Collection.Plate 44.
SHARAKU: THE ACTOR KOSAGAWA TSUNEYO AS A WOMAN IN THE DRAMA OF THE FORTY-SEVEN RONIN.Silver background. Size 14 × 10. SignedToshiusai Sharaku ga. Ainsworth Collection.
Plate 44.
Thehoso-yeprints have, upon the whole, more poise and serenity than the busts; and they will perhaps be judged—in a hundred years, when the excitement of the discovery of Sharaku is over—to be among his greatest works. When they occur in triptychs, as probably all were originally designed to do, they constitute more harmonious and dramatic units than any of Shunsho's actor-triptychs. The finest, and latest in order of production, are generally those without background; in these, isolated and sublime against an empty universe of yellow tint, rise the supreme evocations of Sharaku's genius.
Great distinction of composition marks all of Sharaku's work. Both thehoso-yeand the large bust-portraits are drawn with classic simplicity oflines and masses. Nothing short of certain of the Primitives can approach them. Every superfluous ornament is omitted; as inPlate 43, each line is cut down to its meagrest possible limit. But the expressiveness of the drawing is unsurpassable; and the æsthetic effect of the direct composition grows with every repeated sight. These strange heads against the dark glimmering backgrounds seem Titans rooted in the void; they loom upon one's vision enormously; they are overwhelming with the spiritual greatness of their creator. In spite of all the disturbing unquietness of their conflicts, they are charged with a monumental equilibrium of design, sealed with an exalted peace of conception, poised as for eternity with the repose of measureless space and time around them. At first sight, one would imagine these portraits to be impossibly restless things to live with; but greater familiarity proves them to be like the Sibyls of the Sistine Chapel—vast and enduring figures, whose large passion does not obliterate the fundamental tranquillity of their conception.
The colour which Sharaku employs is of a unique quality: sombre, with lurid lights; heavy and opaque; nightmare colours, leashed into miraculous and incredible harmony; things of infernal and dusky splendour; "tragic colours," Kurth calls them. The dark mica backgrounds, which Sharaku is said, without much proof, to have invented, heighten to a remarkable degree his colour effects. Words and reproductions are alike powerless to convey any sense of them; they hold in store an impressivesensation for him who has not yet seen them. With them Sharaku takes first rank as a colourist.
Toward the end of his brief career, his portraits became almost too terrible in their savage and tragic irony. In the large double-portraits Sharaku tears the mask of humanity aside and shows the very beast. Yet to call even these most extreme of his productions caricatures is to obscure a subtle spiritual essence by a crude word. They are exactly as comic as the ravings of Lear, as mirth-provoking as the laments of Shylock. They are not the light mocking of a scoffer or a comedian, but the appalling and tortured sneer of a man whose vision of men is coloured by his desire for the gods.
"Because he did not represent reality, but on the contrary painted unnatural figures, the public became hostile toward him." ... "His figures were too realistic." ... "He was a bungler in art." ... From these conflicting criticisms, found in various Japanese authorities, we may gather with what comprehension the public of that day accepted the final work of the great painter; and we may conjecture what neglect and hatred forced him into a never-broken retirement.
Dr. Kurth is of the opinion that, after the year 1795, Sharaku still continued to produce secretly a few prints under the assumed name of Kabukidō Yenkyō, and attempted under this disguise to win back the popularity of his prime. This is an alluring but somewhat fantastic theory, which neither the documentary nor the internal evidence of Yenkyō's work adequately supports. Other authorities believeYenkyō to have been an independent artist who was a pupil of Sharaku. His work strangely resembles that of Kunimasa I. At the present time it cannot be said that the question is wholly settled; but it would be rash to accept Kurth's theory at its face value.
In conclusion, let us grant that Sharaku is not for every one. One cannot quarrel with a person who says, "I understand Sharaku; I see the measureless depths of his tragic irony, the unique splendour of his colour, the perfect mastery of his composition. But I do not like him. I prefer Kiyonaga, just as I prefer the stately beauty of Keats to the troubled profundity of Blake." Such a position is comprehensible and impregnable. But he who finds Sharaku merely grotesque or absurd or repellent should return to the portraits for further study; he has not yet reached the immortal heart of Sharaku's work, and he is missing a memorable experience.
Exact comparisons are profitless; but most students of Japanese prints have at certain times turned from the work of Sharaku with the deep conviction that this man was the greatest genius of them all.
Sharaku's output was not large, and his work is now of the utmost rarity. The Parisian collectors long ago recognized Sharaku's greatness, and at a time when Fenollosa was proclaiming Sharaku as an "arch-purveyor of vulgarities," and Strange was grudgingly describing him in seven lines as an artist "of great power but little grace," the collectors ofParis had already acquired such Sharaku treasures as are now a lavish and deserved reward for their foresight. Perhaps the only collection of Sharaku prints that can rival those of Paris is the notable Spaulding Collection of Boston, which takes high rank.
A Silver Print.
The sky, a plate of darkened steel,Weighs on the far rim of the sea,Save where the lifted glooms revealThe last edge of the sun burned free.Blood-red, it drops departingly.And in the nightmare or the hour,Against the terrible sea and sky,A woman's figure—a strange flower—Lingers. Her wearied, curious eyeWatches the burning world go by.
The sky, a plate of darkened steel,Weighs on the far rim of the sea,Save where the lifted glooms revealThe last edge of the sun burned free.Blood-red, it drops departingly.
And in the nightmare or the hour,Against the terrible sea and sky,A woman's figure—a strange flower—Lingers. Her wearied, curious eyeWatches the burning world go by.
Though Choki is probably not to be counted as one of the few supremely great artists of the Ukioye School, his fame has been steadily increasing during the last twenty years; and whereas he once held an insignificant place in the esteem of amateurs, he has of late been regarded with an interest and admiration that at times seem almost more than his deserts. Mr. Strange calls him the most graceful of all the figure-designers of his time, and Kurth does not hesitate to deal with him as "mit einem Riesengroszen." I note in Kurth a tendency to exalt an artist because of his proficiency in technical processes, to an extent that I cannot assent to; Choki was superb, but hardly Titanic. It would be difficult to characterize him more justly thanin the words of M. Koechlin, "Le plus curieux des petits maîtres." This description certainly does not err on the side of over-enthusiasm; perhaps these are rather lukewarm words to apply to a grace so exquisite, a precision so sharp, and a spiritual appeal so strangely alluring as that of Choki.
CHOKI.CHOKI.
CHOKI.
Absolutely nothing is known of Yeishōsai Choki's life; it is believed that he was a pupil of Sekiyen, who also taught Utamaro. The Japanese authorities are inexplicably silent about him. Internal evidence, however, tells us that his work lies between the years 1785 and 1805. His earliest designs are strongly after the manner of Kiyonaga, whose feminine types he at first adopted almost literally. These he modified somewhat a little later when he came under the influence of Yeishi, whose slender and delicate figures led him away from the robust ones of Kiyonaga. One of Choki's pillar-prints, illustrated inPlate 45, marks an interesting transition stage. The face and figure seem at first sight almost purely of the Kiyonaga variety, but on closer examination differences appear; and most striking of all is the fact that the colour-scheme is that peculiar combination of yellow, grey, violet, blue, and black which was distinctive of some of Yeishi's finest work. The influence of Sharaku on Choki was at some timevery strong, though the precise date is almost impossible to determine. So great was Choki's admiration for this master that later, when he had arrived at his own distinctive manner, he produced a pillar-print of a girl holding a fan on which appears Sharaku's famous design of "The Man with the Pipe." But Choki followed no one else as badly as he did Sharaku; though he appears to have learned things that were of great value to him later, his immediate imitations of the great ironist reduced the superb effects of the latter to the level of caricatures and dissipated the effect of concentrated force which marks his work. Utamaro proved a more congenial influence; and in Choki's earlier prints there are many traces of the grace, though not of the versatility, of that artist.
CHOKI: COURTESAN AND ATTENDANT. SHUNMAN: TWO LADIES UNDER A MAPLE-TREE.CHOKI: COURTESAN AND ATTENDANT.Size 26 × 4½.SignedChoki ga.SHUNMAN: TWO LADIES UNDER A MAPLE-TREE.Size 24 × 5.SignedKubo Shunman ga.Plate 45.
CHOKI: COURTESAN AND ATTENDANT. SHUNMAN: TWO LADIES UNDER A MAPLE-TREE.
CHOKI: COURTESAN AND ATTENDANT.Size 26 × 4½.SignedChoki ga.
SHUNMAN: TWO LADIES UNDER A MAPLE-TREE.Size 24 × 5.SignedKubo Shunman ga.
Plate 45.
About 1790 there came out of this series of imitations a curious blended type, which finally became Choki's distinctive own. This type is a composite of Kiyonaga, Yeishi, and Sharaku, but ultimately unlike any of them in its effect. The lower part of the face is prominent; the neck is elongated and wonderfully delicate; about the eyes there is a narrowing that is unusual. These figures of Choki's are distinguished by a precision in drawing so sharp as to be almost an affectation, and by a grace half of whose unique fascination is produced by some strangeness of gesture, some keenness of characterization, or some unusual angle of vision. Few examples of Choki's work in this manner survive; but they are sufficient to lift his reputation from that of a copyist to that of a notable creator of women's portraits.Woman was his great theme. "Er hat ihrem Liebreiz das Hohelied der Japanischen Malerei überhaupt gesungen," says Kurth, in a burst of enthusiasm for these subtle designs. His most striking works in this manner, and perhaps the greatest of all his works, are undoubtedly his half-length figures on mica or silver backgrounds. Of the fascination of these rare prints it is impossible to gain any idea from a reproduction. They rise into the world of the miraculous; they are pure incantations. Such sheets as the famous "Fireflies," or the two women smoking by the river, or the falling-snow scene, or the sunset by the sea, have a beauty as unique as it is haunting. The colours, dull in tone, produce against the metallic sheen of the silver backgrounds unparalleled arrangements that are positively disturbing in their super-refinement.
Choki's blue and silver and red tones seem to pass over into a region where dwell things inexpressible by ordinary pigments. The most sophisticated amateur shivers before some of these colour-harmonies. Choki's characteristic prints are never restful, but always exciting and vibrant; they are dominated by some hidden instability of equilibrium that reacts on one's nerves like a drug. Their beauty has a certain madness in it, or at least a note of strain and disquietude. Thus in the end, for all his imitative efforts, Choki stands, as did Sharaku, in solitary isolation and impenetrable mystery.
CHOKI: A COURTESAN AND HER LOVER. CHOKI: A GEISHA AND HER SERVANT CARRYING LUTE-BOX.CHOKI: A COURTESAN AND HER LOVER.Size 24 × 4½.SignedShiko, hitsu.CHOKI: A GEISHA AND HER SERVANT CARRYING LUTE-BOX.Size 24 × 5.SignedShiko, hitsu.Plate 46.
CHOKI: A COURTESAN AND HER LOVER. CHOKI: A GEISHA AND HER SERVANT CARRYING LUTE-BOX.
CHOKI: A COURTESAN AND HER LOVER.Size 24 × 4½.SignedShiko, hitsu.
CHOKI: A GEISHA AND HER SERVANT CARRYING LUTE-BOX.Size 24 × 5.SignedShiko, hitsu.
Plate 46.
For reasons unknown to us, Choki late in his activity changed his signature to Shiko and produced under this name a small number of prints regardingthe quality of which opinions differ. They are all in the manner of Utamaro's later style, and so little resemble the work signed "Choki" that one has to use a distinct effort to restrain one's incredulity, in the face of pretty clear evidence that the two names were used by a single artist. Easily first among these prints are a few splendid pillar-prints; one of these, the two singers with the black box, illustrated inPlate 46, seems to me almost the finest pillar-print post-dating 1795 that I have ever seen. Of this form Choki was a consummate master. But M. Koechlin regards these Shiko prints as mere imitations of Utamaro's period of decadence, and rejoices in the fact that they are so rare. Mr. Arthur Morrison, on the other hand, who points out correctly that Shiko is Choki's late, not his early name (a matter on which most writers have inexplicably gone astray) feels that the Shiko sheets are, in the best instances, of more elegance and distinction than anything produced under the Choki signature. I should hardly like to agree with either view, but am content to put the Shiko pillar-prints and the Choki silver-prints side by side, and regard them as the supreme examples of the double talent of this puzzling genius.
SHIKO.SHIKO.
SHIKO.
All of Choki's work is of great rarity; that signed Shiko is possibly even rarer than thatsigned Choki. Rarest and most highly treasured of all are his silver-prints; the ordinary collector will probably never have an opportunity to obtain one.
Nagahide IIandIchirakusai Nagamatsu(Chōshō) may be mentioned as followers of Choki. The fact that we do not know of more disciples of so brilliant a designer is another one of the inexplicable things that surround him.
The Pupil of Toyokuni.
I walk the crowded Yedo streets,And everywhere one question greetsMy passing, as the strollers say—"How goes the Master's work to-day?We saw him sketching hard last nightAt Ryogoku, where the brightTrails of the rockets lit the air.You should have seen the ladies there!All the most famous of the townIn gorgeous robes walked up and downThe long bridge-span, well-knowing heWas there to draw them gorgeously.I'm sure he'll give us something fine—Dark splendid figures, lights ashine,A great procession of our bestAnd costliest Oiran, with the WestBurning behind them. When it's done,Pray, of the copies, save me one."Yes, I am pupil to the great.How well he bears his famous state!With what superbness he fulfillsThe multitude's delighted wills,Giving them, at their eager call,Each play and feast and festivalDrawn with a rich magnificence:And they come flocking with their penceTo buy his sheets whose supple powerCaptures the plaudits of the hour—Till even Utamaro's eyesTurn, kindled with swift jealousies.Strange! that before this crowded shrineOne voice is lacking, and that mine—I, learner in his lordly house—I, on whose cold, unwilling browsThe lights of his strong glory burn,Blinding my heart that needs must yearnFar from the measure of his state—I, liegeman to another fate.Would that some blindness came on meThat I might cease one hour to see,For all his high, ambitious will,His is a peasant's nature still....What utter madness that my thoughtWeighs him—I who am less than naught!Where he walks boldly, there I creep.Where his assured long brush-strokes sweepUnhesitant, there I falter, strainWith agony—perhaps in vain—For some more subtly curving line,Some musical poising of designThat shall at last, at last expressMy frailer glimpse of loveliness.And yet, for all his facile art,I hug my impotence to my heart.For there are things his marching mindIn steady labours day by dayWith all its sight shall never find,With all its craft can never say.There are lights along the dusky streetThat his bold eyes have never caught;There are tones more luminous, more sweetThan any that his hopes have sought.There are torturing lines that curve and fallLike dying echoes musical,Or twine and lave and bend and roll,In labyrinths to lure my soul.His ladies sumptuous and rareMove princess-like in proud designOf glowing loveliness: but whereHis bannered pomps and pageants shine,I feel a stiller, rarer peace,A cadence breathless, slender, lone.And where his facile brush-strokes ceaseBegins the realm that is my own.I wander lonely by fields and streams.I lie in wait for lingering dreamsThat brood, a tender-lighted hazeDown the wide space of ending days—A secret thrill that hovering fliesRound some tall form, some wistful eyes,Some thin branch where the Spring is green—A whisper heard, a light half-seenBy lonely wanderers abroadIn crowded streets or solitudeOf hills—to haunt with dim unrestThe empty chambers of the breast.Perhaps some day a heart shall come,Like me half-blind, like me half-dumb,Like me contentless with the clearSunlighted beauties men hold dear.Perhaps he will more greatly prizeMy faltered whispers from afarThan all the Master's pageantriesAnd confident pomp and press and jar.Yet, well or ill, how shall I changeThe measure doled, the nature given?Mine is the thirst for far and strangeEchoes of a forgotten heaven.I listen for the ghosts of sound;Remote, I watch life's eager stream;Through wastes afar, through gulfs profound,I, Toyohiro, seek my dream.
I walk the crowded Yedo streets,And everywhere one question greetsMy passing, as the strollers say—"How goes the Master's work to-day?We saw him sketching hard last nightAt Ryogoku, where the brightTrails of the rockets lit the air.You should have seen the ladies there!All the most famous of the townIn gorgeous robes walked up and downThe long bridge-span, well-knowing heWas there to draw them gorgeously.I'm sure he'll give us something fine—Dark splendid figures, lights ashine,A great procession of our bestAnd costliest Oiran, with the WestBurning behind them. When it's done,Pray, of the copies, save me one."
Yes, I am pupil to the great.How well he bears his famous state!With what superbness he fulfillsThe multitude's delighted wills,Giving them, at their eager call,Each play and feast and festivalDrawn with a rich magnificence:And they come flocking with their penceTo buy his sheets whose supple powerCaptures the plaudits of the hour—Till even Utamaro's eyesTurn, kindled with swift jealousies.
Strange! that before this crowded shrineOne voice is lacking, and that mine—I, learner in his lordly house—I, on whose cold, unwilling browsThe lights of his strong glory burn,Blinding my heart that needs must yearnFar from the measure of his state—I, liegeman to another fate.Would that some blindness came on meThat I might cease one hour to see,For all his high, ambitious will,His is a peasant's nature still....What utter madness that my thoughtWeighs him—I who am less than naught!Where he walks boldly, there I creep.Where his assured long brush-strokes sweepUnhesitant, there I falter, strainWith agony—perhaps in vain—For some more subtly curving line,Some musical poising of designThat shall at last, at last expressMy frailer glimpse of loveliness.And yet, for all his facile art,I hug my impotence to my heart.For there are things his marching mindIn steady labours day by dayWith all its sight shall never find,With all its craft can never say.There are lights along the dusky streetThat his bold eyes have never caught;There are tones more luminous, more sweetThan any that his hopes have sought.There are torturing lines that curve and fallLike dying echoes musical,Or twine and lave and bend and roll,In labyrinths to lure my soul.His ladies sumptuous and rareMove princess-like in proud designOf glowing loveliness: but whereHis bannered pomps and pageants shine,I feel a stiller, rarer peace,A cadence breathless, slender, lone.And where his facile brush-strokes ceaseBegins the realm that is my own.
I wander lonely by fields and streams.I lie in wait for lingering dreamsThat brood, a tender-lighted hazeDown the wide space of ending days—A secret thrill that hovering fliesRound some tall form, some wistful eyes,Some thin branch where the Spring is green—A whisper heard, a light half-seenBy lonely wanderers abroadIn crowded streets or solitudeOf hills—to haunt with dim unrestThe empty chambers of the breast.
Perhaps some day a heart shall come,Like me half-blind, like me half-dumb,Like me contentless with the clearSunlighted beauties men hold dear.Perhaps he will more greatly prizeMy faltered whispers from afarThan all the Master's pageantriesAnd confident pomp and press and jar.Yet, well or ill, how shall I changeThe measure doled, the nature given?Mine is the thirst for far and strangeEchoes of a forgotten heaven.I listen for the ghosts of sound;Remote, I watch life's eager stream;Through wastes afar, through gulfs profound,I, Toyohiro, seek my dream.
Utagawa Toyokuni was born in 1768, and early began his apprenticeship as a pupil of Toyoharu. From this master he learned the rules of Europeanperspective—a device which he soon abandoned for the true Japanese convention. He may have studied under Shunyei for a short time. Though he was later to become a fertile producer of actor-prints, he inaugurated his work with the figures of women. His first works imitate the type of face and figure made famous by Shunsho's and Shigemasa's book, "Mirror of the Beautiful Women of the Yoshiwara." Before 1790 he gave up this type for one copied from Kiyonaga, who was at this time at the height of his fame. But Toyokuni was no such draughtsman as Kiyonaga, and his figures in this manner are generally poorly drawn and awkward. At this time he frequently adopted colour-schemes from Shunman. After Kiyonaga's retirement Toyokuni began to use the delicate type made popular by the rising genius of Choki; but after a short interval he went over to Utamaro, who was then coming into supreme mastery.
TOYOKUNI.TOYOKUNI.
TOYOKUNI.
Up to 1791, therefore (according to Friedrich Succo, "Toyokuni und Seine Zeit," München, 1913), Toyokuni was exclusively a painter of women. But when in the early nineties the colossal Sharaku brought out his revolutionary actor-portraits, Toyokuni abandoned his old field and adopted, to the extent that a smaller man could, the themes and eventually the manner of this great genius. At firstSharaku appears to have been an awakener rather than a guide to Toyokuni; for we find that it was to Shunsho's style that Toyokuni first looked for a model. But when Sharaku's great series of the Ronin bust-portraits appeared, Toyokuni at once responded to them as the strongest influence of his whole life and produced a number of similar portraits in a manner that captures all the eccentricities but little of the strength or insight of Sharaku. A more successful series, also definitely inspired by Sharaku's Ronin busts, was a set of full-length Ronin figures which Toyokuni then brought out. These tall monumental designs, with striking masses of black and deep colour against grey or mica backgrounds, are perhaps the finest actors in the whole long list of this artist's work. Though they never surpass Shunsho's or Sharaku's supreme creations, they are powerful conceptions, and constitute some basis for the claim of Toyokuni's admirers that he was the third-greatest of the actor-painters.
When, about 1794, Sharaku's career came to a sudden and tragic close, Toyokuni turned back from actors to women. Once more he followed Utamaro in the selection of his type, and with greater success than heretofore. To this period belongs the really splendid triptych, "The Journey of Narahira," representing a man on horseback and six attendants, admirably spaced, at the foot of Fuji. In this period also must be placed the series of pillar-prints of unusual width and shortness, very richly printed, representing courtesans and actors together. The print of this series which shows Ichikawa Kōmazōpushing back a reed blind to surprise a half-clothed courtesan is a very fine work. These, and other productions of this time, justify us in calling this decade the best period of Toyokuni's activity.
TOYOKUNI: LADIES AND CHERRY BLOSSOMS IN THE WIND.TOYOKUNI: LADIES AND CHERRY BLOSSOMS IN THE WIND.Right-hand sheet of a triptych. Size 15 × 10. SignedToyokuni ga. Metzgar Collection.Plate 47.
TOYOKUNI: LADIES AND CHERRY BLOSSOMS IN THE WIND.Right-hand sheet of a triptych. Size 15 × 10. SignedToyokuni ga. Metzgar Collection.
Plate 47.
But before 1800 Toyokuni had followed Utamaro in that artist's adoption of the thin necks, enormous coiffures, and distorted bodies which not even Utamaro was always able to handle beautifully. Toyokuni's success was far inferior. The over-ripeness of the type required all Utamaro's subtlety to make it attractive or significant; and Toyokuni was by no means subtle. Therefore it was no loss when he returned to actor-prints shortly thereafter. One print of this, his second actor-period—the savage portrait of Matsumoto Kōshirō, reproduced by Succo—is notable and fine. But on the whole his second period shows Toyokuni as only slightly more original than in the Sharaku period. In his portraits of women at this time he sometimes leaned a little toward the Yeishi type, with Yeishi's stiffness but without his distinction. Many books, from these as well as from other years, bear witness to his industry; he was a veritable geyser of prints of every sort.
In 1804 Toyokuni was obscurely involved in trouble with the authorities over some of his historical prints. This was the time when Utamaro also suffered at their hands. In 1806 Utamaro died; and Toyokuni, who had so long leaned on the greater painter for his stimulus and inspiration, went to pieces like a house of cards. Without a rival to emulate, he was nothing; and we see him, a tragic figure—indisputably themost famous master then living, who had survived the great days when he had competed with Kiyonaga, Yeishi, and Utamaro for popular favour—now alone in a glory which he could not sustain—a master bereft of those conditions which had once enabled him to produce almost-masterpieces.
From this time on his work steadily deteriorated. The raw and over-complicated colours of his designs of women made a melancholy contrast to the "Narahira" triptych. He abandoned woman-portraiture about 1810. His actors continued—a mere outworn formula—awkward, angular creations, with senselessly crossed eyes, twisted necks, wry mouths—the veriest parody on those devices which had once been employed by Sharaku for a sublime end. Toyokuni died in 1825, a man who had outlived himself.
Toyokuni's production had been enormous. The contemporaneous popularity indicated by this is hard to understand unless we remember his frequent shiftings of style and realize that at every moment he was ready to throw off his old manner and adopt that of whatever artist most strongly appealed to the taste of the hour. He was the most imitative of all artists. What the mob wanted he gave them unreservedly, losing his own integrity thereby.
Toyokuni seems to have been without real individuality or individual view-point. He was devoid of either illusions or insight; and the true artist must have the one or the other passionately. He drew his women without enthusiasm and without tenderness. He conceived his actors without the white-heat of real artistic creation. There is something raspingabout the greater part of his work; it seems full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. It is rhetoric, not the profound and tragic poetry of Sharaku, nor the subtle and decadent lyric strain of Utamaro. Rarely did he make an authentic attempt to capture the beauty or wonder or terror of life as he himself saw it. It is always the vision of other men that he is reporting, not his own. He had no vision.
So long as he could attach himself to some productive master, catching that master's feeling and style to a certain extent, he produced creditable works. But when the support was withdrawn he seemed powerless to take another step along that road. Kiyonaga's retirement, Sharaku's downfall, Utamaro's death—each in turn cut short Toyokuni's prosperous career in the footsteps of these masters. When left to himself he had only one thing to revert to—the typical Toyokuni actor at its worst, a thing of common ugliness.
No fame has tarnished more than his with the passing of time. As Sharaku's has brightened, his has dimmed. Once he was esteemed the greatest living print-designer; now I find that many students feel a sense of surprise when occasionally, out of the thousands of Toyokuni's prints, one appears that is really distinguished.
It must, however, be admitted that at certain times Toyokuni's native brilliancy enabled him to create prints that are not surpassed by any of his contemporaries. He did more poor work than any other artist of his time; but such triptychs as the "Ryogoku Fireworks," in the Kiyonaga manner, the "Bath House," in which shadows appear on the wall, the"Fan Shop," and the "Ladies and Cherry-blossoms in the Wind," are beyond criticism.
The best Toyokuni prints are very rare; the common ones are to be found plentifully in every print-shop. His few finest triptychs, such as the "Narahira," or the "Ladies and Cherry-blossoms in the Wind," of which one sheet appears inPlate 47, are among the collector's important treasures.
The beginner should be warned that there were, in all, at least five men who at various times bore the name Toyokuni. No one of the successors of the first Toyokuni ever produced work comparable with the finest work of Toyokuni I; but it is a matter of great difficulty, not yet by any means wholly clear, to distinguish between the late inferior work of Toyokuni I and the work of several of the succeeding Toyokunis. One simple indication may be of service to the inexperienced collector: If the Toyokuni signature is in a red oval or cartouch, it is not by the first master. This statement cannot, however, be reversed, for the later Toyokunis often signed without the cartouch.
A Group of Ladies.