KORIUSAI.KORIUSAI.
KORIUSAI.
Koriusai's small prints have often a beauty almost equal to Harunobu's, but they lack individuality of invention. They never surpass the triumphs of the older master in this form. Koriusai seldom can catch Harunobu's perfect grace and repose, his luminous atmosphere and subtle colour. But in his large sheets he produced a few compositions whose elaborate magnificence is a new and individual achievement. The styles in hair-dressing which came into vogue at this time were no small element in enabling him to create his stately figures; the wide lines of the coiffure, more solid and massive than in Harunobu's day, lent itself admirably to strong decorative treatment. In a series of large sheets called "Designs of SpringGreenery," each picture representing an Oiran and her two or more young attendants, some of the prints are disfigured by the heaviness of the faces; but others, from which this exaggeration is absent, are of almost unparalleled splendour in colour, even though somewhat monotonous in their repetitions. One of this type, in the Morse Collection, Evanston (described at No. 155 of Fenollosa's Ketcham Catalogue) is surely one of the greatest prints in the world. Some of Koriusai's designs of birds and other animals, occasionally printed with mica backgrounds, are admirable compositions.
But Koriusai's distinctive glory lies in the sphere of pillar-prints, of which five are reproduced in Plates16,17, and18. This form of composition is one of the most interesting and exacting to be found in the art of any race; the tall sheet, generally about 28 inches high and only 5 inches wide, furnishes a mere ribbon of space that taxes all the resources of a designer. It is like a Greek frieze placed on end; but whereas the frieze gives space for a multitude of processional figures, and is essentially a stage for the depiction of a social pageant, this slim panel demands the exclusion of all but a few significant lines. In this particular it is the finest of art-forms. It exacts the quintessence of selection—one narrow glimpse of some cross-section of life. Its limitations are like those of the lyric, requiring a concentrated and finely chosen vision.
KORIUSAI: TWO LADIES.KORIUSAI: TWO LADIES.Size 29 × 5.SignedKoriu ga.KORIUSAI: A GAME OF TAG.Size 26 × 5.SignedKoriusai ga.Plate 17.
KORIUSAI: TWO LADIES.
KORIUSAI: TWO LADIES.Size 29 × 5.SignedKoriu ga.
KORIUSAI: A GAME OF TAG.Size 26 × 5.SignedKoriusai ga.
Plate 17.
The shape was first devised by Okumura Masanobu as a modification of the wider and shorter sheets commonly used by the Primitives for their large pictures.As is often the case in the evolution of a fine art-form, it was not Masanobu's mere whim, but structural exigencies, that prompted the invention, the need being to provide long narrow pictures that could be hung upon the square wooden pillar of the Japanese house. Kiyomitsu and Toyonobu used this shape admirably; and the final and most perfect form for its dimensions was fixed and brought into general use by Harunobu. It became a favourite shape among the greatest of the later artists; and no small number of their supreme achievements are in this form. To the modern European eye, no other seems so distinctively characteristic of the special Japanese genius.
Pillar-prints are almost invariably works of the first importance—pièces de résistance, deliberate and studied productions, representing the best effort and highest powers of the artist. For they were intended to be mounted and rolled, likekakemono; and the artist could therefore foresee for them a degree of attention that he could hardly expect in the case of the loose square sheets. The peculiar shape is in itself so interesting and beautiful, and so ringing a challenge to the powers of the designer, that in many cases the best work of the artist is to be found only in this form.
Pillar-prints are to-day far rarer than prints of the square variety. They were probably produced in editions of smaller numbers than the square prints; and, further, the use to which they were put as hanging pictures exposed them to hazardous vicissitudes and generally resulted in eventual destruction.
Koriusai's variations on the limited themes whose treatment is possible in this narrow space display daring, originality, and power of concentrated selection. He is the supreme master of the pillar-print; no one else has produced so many fine ones, and practically all his finest work is in this form. The infinite variety of his designs and the fertility of his invention make a series of his pillar-prints one of the most absorbing features of a fine collection. In one print (Plate 17), he dashes the intense black line of a screen down through the middle of his picture and sets the delicate eddies of a child's and a young girl's garments playing around its base. In a second (Plate 18), a girl in robes of gorgeous colour stands like a calm peacock, with glowing orange combs alight in her hair; while in a third (Plate 16), the whole space waves and sings with the forms of grasses, a flying cuckoo, and a maiden carried in the arms of her lover through fields of spring. And in a fourth (Plate 17), he draws the figures of two women, one behind and a little above the other, the one in the background luminous with soft neutral tints, the one in the foreground robed in a black whose intensity cuts sharply through the otherwise monotonous sweetness of the picture. To the grace of Harunobu, Koriusai has here added a vigour all his own, and a richness surpassing that of his teacher.
To-day Koriusai's small prints are rather rare, as are also the birds and the large-size sheets. His pillar-prints, which are his greatest works, were produced in such numbers that, contrary to the rule that applies to the pillar-prints of all other designers,a good many of them have survived. It is still possible to secure examples that are among the foremost of all print treasures.
SHIGEMASA: TWO LADIES.SHIGEMASA: TWO LADIES.Size 28½ × 5.Unsigned.KORIUSAI: A COURTESAN.Size 27 × 4½.SignedKoriusai ga.Plate 18.
SHIGEMASA: TWO LADIES.
SHIGEMASA: TWO LADIES.Size 28½ × 5.Unsigned.
KORIUSAI: A COURTESAN.Size 27 × 4½.SignedKoriusai ga.
Plate 18.
Susuki Harushigeis reported to have been the son and pupil of Harunobu. The few prints of his that are known have a grace of line that might well be a son's heritage, if such things were inheritable. The unholy rascal Shiba Kokan alleges that this name was one which he himself used, as well as Harunobu's; it is reported, on the other hand, that it is merely Koriusai's early name. It is probable that Kokan's statement must be believed.
HARUSHIGE.HARUSHIGE.
HARUSHIGE.
Shiba Kokanhas already been mentioned as the forger of Harunobu's work. His ability needs no further recommendation when we admit that we cannot with certainty tell his prints from Harunobu's. This is his chief title to fame. He was born in 1747 and died in 1818. During his life he signed many names to his work and attempted many manners. From the Dutch at Nagasaki he learned something of the rules of European perspective, and tried, in the eighties, with success but without much beauty, to carry them over into Japanese art. In addition, he introduced shadows into some of his compositions—a device alien to the whole spirit of Chinese and Japanese painting. He was the first Japanese artistto attempt copper-plate engraving. Queer renderings of European scenes by him remain to us. In a hundred different spheres of art, invention, and speculation he tried his hand. His intellectual curiosity in every field reminds one of Leonardo da Vinci. He remains one of the most interesting and puzzling figures of his time—an adventurer, a restless experimenter, a forger and a man of extraordinary though chaotic genius.
A poem written when he was dying has a curious vibrancy: "Kokan now dies, for he is very old; to the passing world he leaves a picture of the world that passes."
Komai Yoshinobudid work in the style of Harunobu during the seventies. He furnishes another example of the obscurity that covers so much of Japanese print history; for it is not known whether he was an independent artist, or identical with Yamamoto Yoshinobu, who produced two-colour prints in the fifties, or worse yet, an early signature of Koriusai. The first theory is the most probable. His work is rare, beautiful in colour, and well worthy of further research.
MASUNOBU.MASUNOBU.
MASUNOBU.
Masunobu, the second of that name, whose work, in clear, delicate colour and charming arrangement, generally follows Harunobu's closely, is also not definitely located. He appears to have been originally a pupil of Shigenobu and Shigenaga. Most writers erroneously regard him as the same man who, under the name of SanseidoTanaka Masunobu, produced two-colour prints in the forties, and hand coloured prints still earlier.
One of the Second Masunobu's pillar-prints, representing a girl with an open umbrella jumping from a balcony to meet a waiting lover, has a unique and most charming individuality of poise and colouring. His pillar-prints, of which about ten are known, are particularly fine.
Ujimasa, Kamegaki Hoōriu, Muranobu, Tachibana Minko, Banto, Chiryu, Ryushi, Kisen, andSuiyoare rare men who worked contemporaneously with Harunobu. The Hayashi Catalogue also namesShoha, Soan, Sogiku, KoganandSeiko.
Kuninobuis an artist of extreme rarity, whose few surviving prints show distinction of line, based on the Harunobu manner. His work, done about 1775, stands out from the work of Harunobu's horde of followers; he was evidently a noteworthy artist, of whom one wishes we knew more.
Fujinobuworked in the manner of Harunobu in the early seventies. His output was small, and little of his work survives. It may be that he was the same individual as Yamamoto Fujinobu, who has already been mentioned as Shigenaga's pupil.
Komatsukenis a name signed to certain calendar-prints for the year 1765. The style is greatly like Harunobu's. His name may also be readShoshoken. Mr. Gookin thinks him to be identical with Fusanobu, who has been previously mentioned.
HarutsuguandSusuki Haruji, said by some to be the same person, produced a few pleasing prints about 1770.
Portrait of an Actor in Tragic Rôle.
His soul is a sword;His sword with the spirit's breathIs bathed of its terrible lord,In whose eyes is death.And the massive control,And the lighted implacable eyeLeash a fierce and exalted soulOf dark destiny.. . . . . .With the strength of the hills—Kiso's iron mountains of snow—He waits: time brings and fulfillsThe hour for the blow.He waits; and the whiteFull robes round his shoulders sway,With woof of pale orange alight,Pale green, pale grey.Like a falcon, flownTo bleak mid-regions of sky,He poises. One image aloneHolds his sinister eye—A vision, a preyTowards which he shall soon be hurled—And his fury shall darken the day,And his joy, the world.. . . . . .A music enfolds himLike the thunders that are pouredAcross heaven; it holds himWith the song of the sword.It enthrals, it inspires,And its zenith shall beLightning of unleashed desiresCrashing along the sea.
His soul is a sword;His sword with the spirit's breathIs bathed of its terrible lord,In whose eyes is death.
And the massive control,And the lighted implacable eyeLeash a fierce and exalted soulOf dark destiny.
. . . . . .
With the strength of the hills—Kiso's iron mountains of snow—He waits: time brings and fulfillsThe hour for the blow.
He waits; and the whiteFull robes round his shoulders sway,With woof of pale orange alight,Pale green, pale grey.
Like a falcon, flownTo bleak mid-regions of sky,He poises. One image aloneHolds his sinister eye—
A vision, a preyTowards which he shall soon be hurled—And his fury shall darken the day,And his joy, the world.
. . . . . .
A music enfolds himLike the thunders that are pouredAcross heaven; it holds himWith the song of the sword.
It enthrals, it inspires,And its zenith shall beLightning of unleashed desiresCrashing along the sea.
SHUNSHO: AN ACTOR OF THE ISHIKAWA SCHOOL IN TRAGIC RÔLE.SHUNSHO: AN ACTOR OF THE ISHIKAWA SCHOOL IN TRAGIC RÔLE.Size 12 × 6. SignedShunsho ga.Plate 19.
SHUNSHO: AN ACTOR OF THE ISHIKAWA SCHOOL IN TRAGIC RÔLE.Size 12 × 6. SignedShunsho ga.
Plate 19.
Those actor-types which Harunobu and his school so scornfully cast aside became the chosen speciality of the greatest of his rivals and contemporaries, Katsukawa Shunsho. As one examines sheet after sheet of Shunsho's theatrical prints, Harunobu's contemptuous words concerning "this vulgar herd," the actors, lose their significance; for here pass in gorgeous procession a series of lofty, intense, and unforgettable figures charged with the quintessence of heroic force.
KATSUKAWA SHUNSHO.KATSUKAWA SHUNSHO.
KATSUKAWA SHUNSHO.
The designer of these prints was born in 1726 and died about 1792—some authorities say 1790. His period of greatest activity covered the years 1765 to 1780, thus including the working periods of both Harunobu and Koriusai, and ending as Koriusai's did when in the eighties Kiyonaga's star rose blindingly. He lived for a while at the house of his publisher, Hayashi; sometimes in his early work he used in place of a signature a seal shaped like a small covered jar with handles, on which Hayashi's name is inscribed. The legend is that he was too poor to own a seal in the early days of his struggle and so borrowed that of his landlord!
Shunsho had no antecedent teachers among the print-designers. He sprang instead from a school of painters who did not design for prints. These, headed by Choshun and his son Katsukawa Shunsui,had since 1700 been producing rich paintings of women in elaborate drapery. The Buckingham Collection contains one print by Shunsui, but it is an almost unique rarity. Shunsho, by a curious shift in the stream of art history, not only took up prints, but even took up the department of prints least in line with the tendencies of his own school, the department of actor-representation, which was the speciality of Kiyomitsu and the old Torii School, and which Harunobu's popular innovations had almost driven out of fashion. To this work Shunsho brought the new technique of Harunobu and great native individuality; and with the fresh armament of full colour he defended magnificently the threatened stronghold of actor-prints. His popularity became enormous. He grew quickly to the stature of one of the great and far-reaching powers in Ukioye history. Side by side with Harunobu, he in his separate field executed year by year actor-portraits which by their vigour of line and brilliancy of colour-combination take a place as high as that held by the works of his rival.
No contrast could be more striking than that between them. The one is all grace, the other all force; the one loves to linger in quiet gardens, the other drags us up to the icy heights of tragic crisis. Shunsho's sense of dramatic composition was keen; and, as we see inPlate 19, his ferocious actor-faces peer out with a vivid menace, his tense actor-limbs shake with a concentrated and imprisoned fury not the less impressive because of its intentional exaggeration. They have not Harunobu's unreality ofperfect grace, but the utterly different super-reality of magnified passion. In repose they are like statues; in action they have the vigour of those natural forces—waves, river currents, storms of thunder—which, as in the Shunsho print reproduced on the cover of this volume,[Transcriber's Note: The edition used to produce this etext did not include this print on the cover.] so often form their backgrounds.
SHUNSHO: THE ACTOR NAKAMURA MATSUYE AS A WOMAN IN WHITE.SHUNSHO: THE ACTOR NAKAMURA MATSUYE AS A WOMAN IN WHITE.Size 11 × 5½. Unsigned.Plate 20.
SHUNSHO: THE ACTOR NAKAMURA MATSUYE AS A WOMAN IN WHITE.Size 11 × 5½. Unsigned.
Plate 20.
Shunsho's figures of women—or rather his figures of men acting the parts of women, according to the invariable custom of the Japanese stage at this time—are less violent, but often as tense. Two of these appear in Plates20and21. In long sweeping robes of brilliant dye they move with the step of a Clytemnestra, or poise in strange attitudes of arrested motion not unworthy of an Antigone. All his figures are dynamic—the storehouses of volcanic forces whose existence he suggests by restless line-conflicts.
Shunsho's predecessors in actor representation had never equalled the intensity of these figures and faces. Shunsho tears the heart out of a rôle and holds it up for us to see. He gives the passion of the actor such expression as would have been impossible to Kiyonobu, twisting the face into a distorted and grandiose mask beside which the faces of the Primitives seem wooden and meaningless.
The spectator whose æsthetic sense embraces only a love of tranquillity will find no beauty in these disturbing faces and forms—unless perhaps the beauty of pure colour is enough to beguile him. It may well do this; few things have power to bring a richer sense of æsthetic satisfaction than a succession offine Shunshos, in each one of which a new colour-arrangement unfolds new harmonies.
Shunsho's work includes a very great number of actor-prints in the narrow uprighthoso-yeform and a few large square prints. He also issued a series of small illustrations for the "Ise Monogatari," an old romantic chronicle which furnished many favourite subjects to the artists. These are quiet in design and soft in colour; to them the eye may turn for rest if wearied by the straining actors. In collaboration with Shigemasa he produced a set of ten small prints representing sericulture, which have considerable charm. In 1776 the same pair of artists brought out a series of book-illustrations called "Mirror of the Beauties of the Green Houses," representing groups of courtesans occupied with the various activities of daily life—in the street, the house, the garden, and the temple. This book has been called the most beautiful ever produced in Japan; when one examines its chief rival, "The Mirror of the Beautiful Women of the Yoshiwara," by Kitao Masanobu, one need have no hesitancy in giving Shunsho's and Shigemasa's the first place. This means, very probably, the first place among the illustrated books of the world. Its pages, printed in rose, purple, brown, yellow, and grey, are rich and delicate. Sheets from all these books are often found mounted as separate prints. Shunsho's few known pillar-prints are generally magnificent.
SHUNSHO: THE ACTOR NAKAMURA NOSHIO IN FEMALE RÔLE.SHUNSHO: THE ACTOR NAKAMURA NOSHIO IN FEMALE RÔLE.Size 12½ × 6. SignedShunsho ga. Gookin Collection.Plate 21.
SHUNSHO: THE ACTOR NAKAMURA NOSHIO IN FEMALE RÔLE.Size 12½ × 6. SignedShunsho ga. Gookin Collection.
Plate 21.
Because of his enormous productiveness, Shunsho's work inhoso-yeform is common, frequently in fine condition. Most of thehoso-yeprints were originallyissued in joined groups of three; the groups are seldom found intact now. The grace of his women has made them more generally popular than his impressive men, and they are consequently harder to obtain. It must be noted that Shunsho's work is uneven, and that the majority of the pieces offered are either tame and uninteresting examples of pot-boiling or caricatures that lack the intensity which lifts certain of the artist's most grotesque figures to tragic heights. The matchless Shunsho collection of Mr. Frederick W. Gookin is full of such prints as rarely come into the market to-day. Occasionally the more distinguished ones are met with; and they are treasures which the practised collector eagerly seizes. Fortunately print dealers are not, as a rule, conscious of the greatness of the difference, and they will frequently offer side by side a print that is merely one of Shunsho's commonest pieces of hack-work and a print that is one of the glories of the Ukioye School. On such occasions the collector has the pleasure of profiting by his own discrimination.
Shunsho's large square prints and pillar-prints are of extreme rarity.
Connected by association with the school of Shunsho, yet lifted by his originality to a place quite apart from it, is the artist Ippitsusai Buncho. His master, a certain Ishikawa Kogen (or Yukimoto) of the classical Kano School, seems to have meant little to him; from the beginning of his production,about 1765, Shunsho's and Harunobu's influence chiefly guided him. He and Shunsho jointly published in 1770 three volumes of actor-portraits enclosed in fans. Little is known of his life except that he was originally a Samurai; he is said to have turned from his original master to the Ukioye School and to have led a life of dissipation until eventually his friends persuaded him to abandon such things and procured for him the honorary title of Hokyo. After this, we hear nothing of him. He died in 1796.
IPPITSUSAI BUNCHO.IPPITSUSAI BUNCHO.
IPPITSUSAI BUNCHO.
Buncho's work attracts the observer with a charm different from that of any other Ukioye artist. A curious mannerism in his way of drawing faces and a fascinating perverse grace in the attitudes of his figures mark his prints. Practically all his work is in thehoso-yeform. His subjects are chiefly young male actors in the rôles of women. Harunobu's influence, manifest inPlate 22, brought him grace but not sweetness. There is an astringent quality in his work that prevents it from ever being serene. His figures, whose line-work is the apotheosis of suavity and studied refinement, are arched into slightly strained and tortured attitudes; complex forces seem to dominate them like unseen winds; consuming or delicate passions move obscurelythrough their limbs and faces. Their heads poise at unnatural angles as if consciously turning their indifferent eyes from the spectacle of common things toward a secret and hypnotizing world of their own. These alien beings haunt one; it seems as if they had some mystery to reveal, some disturbing wonder to communicate could one but make them speak.
BUNCHO: COURTESAN AND HER ATTENDANT IN SNOWSTORM.BUNCHO: COURTESAN AND HER ATTENDANT IN SNOWSTORM.Size 12 × 5½. SignedIppitsusai Buncho ga. Mansfield Collection.Plate 22.
BUNCHO: COURTESAN AND HER ATTENDANT IN SNOWSTORM.Size 12 × 5½. SignedIppitsusai Buncho ga. Mansfield Collection.
Plate 22.
Part of Buncho's strangeness lies in the fact that he seeks for his figures not a human but an abstract and geometrical grace. His famous print, often reproduced, of the actor Segawa Kikunojo as a lady in white carrying an orange umbrella beneath a willow-tree, is a study in the harmonics of pure line; to this end every other element of representation has been sacrificed. Line exists here not merely to bound a form but for its own inherent beauty. Buncho is the greatest of all masters of the geometry of lines and spaces; these have, as he arranges them, the inevitability and clarity of a mathematical demonstration.
His use of colour is equally notable and strange. By employing tints that are almost discords he produces arresting and fascinating effects. His combinations of orange and slaty grey, or dull red and slaty blue and pale yellow, or pink and purple, have an uncanny vibrancy that makes them stand out in one's memory.
Buncho's strangeness has a further aspect. There is in him an intangible spiritual abnormality. I am led to localize this in his portraits of the actor Segawa Kikunojo, and to imagine a curious relation between the two. Some of his portraits of this actor are theflower of his work. In them appears a passionately rarefied beauty; they have an unusual pitch, like the overstrained vibration of violin strings stirred by some heavy blow. Segawa Kikunojo was the foremost woman-impersonator of his time. His grace in such rôles is attested by prints from the hands of many artists; but none rise to the unearthly beauty of Buncho's. Even if we knew nothing of the life of the Japanese stage at this time, or of the custom of actors like Segawa Kikunojo to dress and live like women when off the stage, we might still be put on inquiry by the peculiar ethereal quality of some of these portraits. For art whose initial impulse lies in morbid regions often flies into regions of the most disembodied spirituality for expression. Flowers of the morass frequently have a pale delicacy that is alien to the flowers of the field.
It is, however, with a confession of fancifulness that I reconstruct the following story to account for Buncho. He, a Samurai, was driven by keen artistic sensibility to the study of painting under a classical master. From this studio he was lured by the glitter and glamour of Ukioye into the world of prints and actors, and sank into a slough of dissipation above which gleamed the balefully beautiful star of Segawa Kikunojo. Haunted by a perverse susceptibility, his tense-strung nerves vibrated at that morbid touch into notes of such disembodied sweetness as the world has scarcely known elsewhere; and at last he passed into retirement and death, still the puppet of a disturbing illusion. He was an unbalanced temperament, a dreamer of keen and attenuatedbeauty that has nothing in common with the normal wholesome life of earth.
SHUNYEI: AN ACTOR.SHUNYEI: AN ACTOR.Grey background. Size 14 × 9½. SignedShunyei ga.Plate 23.
SHUNYEI: AN ACTOR.Grey background. Size 14 × 9½. SignedShunyei ga.
Plate 23.
His prints are exceedingly rare; many a good collection possesses not a single fine specimen of his work. I had never seen or heard of a pillar-print by him until very recently; but lately an interesting one has been found in Japan.
SHUNYEI.SHUNYEI.
SHUNYEI.
Shunsho's vigorous style had many followers, among whom Shunyei is commonly regarded as the most important. He was born in 1767, and lived until 1819. His teacher Shunsho's manner dominated his work from his earliest years, though some late sheets exist in which he followed Kiyonaga. It is believed that originally he used the name Shunjo; fine work is extant with that signature. He had many pupils, and was himself an able painter; but his ordinary work is largely derivative. At times, however, hishoso-yeactor-prints achieve an effect of great power by the use of large masses of colour. He had a certain sharpness of observation—a certain knack of catching in his portraits the peculiarities of his models, that produces an effect less dignified but more vivid than Shunsho's. A sense of humour glimmers through his rendering of some of these keenly drawn and intimately characterized actor-faces. Unmistakable as may bethe features of a Danjuro or a Hanshiro drawn by Shunsho, one nevertheless feels that the personality of the actor has been largely dominated by Shunsho's supreme interest in the passion or terror of the rôle; and though he pictured the face of the actor, the spirit which he sought was wholly the spirit of the part. Shunyei, on the other hand, often managed to retain the idiosyncrasies of the sitter and his peculiar spiritual flavour; and though his works are not often as beautiful as Shunsho's, they are frequently more human. On the whole, we may say that Shunsho created generalized types, Shunyei reproduced observed individuals.
Shunyei produced, besides the actors inhoso-yeform by which he is best known, a few large heads and full-length portraits of actors marked by a strength of drawing and a breadth of characterization different from his usual work. One of these is reproduced inPlate 23. On a grey background, this powerfully designed figure stands out with gigantic simplicity in masses of dull colour. The prints of this rare type are perhaps Shunyei's best. Beside them must rank the large actor-heads, interesting to the collector because of their relation to the work of another great artist, Sharaku. It is still uncertain whether Sharaku or Shunyei was the inventor of this type of large bust-portrait. Dr. Kurth assumes, for the greater glory of Sharaku, that he was the precursor; but the question cannot be regarded as settled.
SHUNKO: THE ACTOR ISHIKAWA MONNOSUKE IN CHARACTER.SHUNKO: THE ACTOR ISHIKAWA MONNOSUKE IN CHARACTER.Size 13 × 6. Unsigned, but stamped with Jar Seal.Plate 24.
SHUNKO: THE ACTOR ISHIKAWA MONNOSUKE IN CHARACTER.Size 13 × 6. Unsigned, but stamped with Jar Seal.
Plate 24.
The equal of Shunyei among Shunsho's other pupils is to be found in Katsukawa Shunko. He was the spiritual image of his master, except that he had not his master's full command of terror. His figures, as inPlate 24, poise or sway with gentler emotions; as a rule, they are agreeable rather than impressive. One comes to recognize him frequently by the peculiar suavity of his designs. It is true that he sometimes approaches very near to Shunsho's power; but this is less characteristic and less interesting than his quieter manner. It is unnecessary to treat of him at great length, for most of his work is of a type whose main qualities have been treated fully under Shunsho. It is not known when Shunko was born; he died in 1827.
SHUNKO.SHUNKO.
SHUNKO.
It may be noted that he sometimes sealed his prints instead of signing them, using a jar-shaped seal much like that which Shunsho had made famous.
In the Spaulding Collection, Boston, is a remarkable full-size triptych by Shunko, representing a party of actors picnicking in the country. The style shows it to be greatly influenced by Kiyonaga; and the whole composition of this beautiful piece is different from most of Shunsho's work.
Shunriwas another pupil of Shunsho; he appears to have been a competent designer, but no great figure.Shuntoku, Shunki, Shunkaku, Shoyu, Shunyen, Shunken, andShunkyokumay be described in the same words. Each has perhaps produced a few beautiful works, but their originality is not marked.
Rantokusai Shundo, a gifted pupil of Shunsho, has left work so rare that one cannot make any very definite statement about him. His few known prints are admirable. One suspects that this signature is merely the early name of some well-known artist.
Shunsei, Shunrin, Sobai, andShunkioare later artists; their importance is small.
Shuntei, "owing partly to illness and partly to systematic indulgence in drink" (Strange), and partly to complete lack of natural distinction, produced nothing of interest; and his coarse battle-scenes may be classed with the crude work characteristic of a later period. He worked chiefly between 1800 and 1820.
Kincho Sekigais said to have been a pupil of Buncho.
Shunko IIwas a pupil of Shunyei. His name is written in different characters from that of the first Shunko.Kichosai Shunkoalso produced actor-prints.
Yumishowas a very rare pupil who adopted Kiyonaga's style in line-work. The same may be said ofYenshi, some of whose work is very beautiful;he appears to have come much under the influence of Yeishi. Several of his triptychs are fine.
Utagawa Toyoharu is a strangely equivocal figure in print history; his fame is great, but no surviving print of his, so far as I have been able to ascertain, is of a quality to justify fully his reputation. Born in 1733, he studied with Shigenaga and probably with Toyonobu, produced a limited number of prints in the sixties and seventies, withdrew from prints to painting when Kiyonaga's new style grew to splendour, and died in 1814. He is said to have been a sensitive and delicately strung individual who shrank from competition and worked obscurely. His best-known work is a series of twelve designs for the various months done in collaboration with Shunsho and Shigemasa; each print is divided diagonally into two scenes—a device of unfortunate and ingenious ugliness. The figures, however, have a certain delicate grace. His pillar-prints, which are rare, have considerable beauty.
UTAGAWA TOYOHARU.UTAGAWA TOYOHARU.
UTAGAWA TOYOHARU.
Toyoharu has been called a greater artist than Shunsho. It may be true, yet I am inclined to regard this view either as the result of his paintingand not his print-designing, or as part of a great Toyoharu myth, for which the later success of his pupils is responsible. Certain it is that of his surviving prints few are noteworthy, and that he was greater as a painter and teacher than as a print-designer. We shall remember him more as the instructor of Toyokuni and Toyohiro and as the precursor of Hiroshige than for any of his own prints that remain to us.
As a figure-painter, he is known as the founder of the Utagawa School. As a landscape-painter, he made successful use of European perspective, which he probably learned from Dutch engravings, and was perhaps the first Ukioye print-artist to return to the habit of the older schools and treat landscape not as a mere setting but as a thing by itself. His scenes are too stiff and too crowded with petty details to lay any real claim to beauty. He used as the dominant note in many of them the orange colour so dear to Koriusai; but no pigment can well be imagined that is less fitted for landscape-rendering. Yet the historical importance of these prints is great; for they are, so to speak, the grandparents of the marvellous landscapes of Hiroshige.
Utagawa Toyonobuis believed by some authorities to have been merely Toyoharu's early name; others think him identical with Ishikawa Toyonobu; and still others regard him as an independent artist who was a pupil of Ishikawa Toyonobu, his greater namesake. The few prints we have by him—I know of less than half a dozen—are not sufficient to enable one to form an opinion as to this.
ToyomaruandToyohisawere among Toyoharu's pupils.
KITAO SHIGEMASA.KITAO SHIGEMASA.
KITAO SHIGEMASA.
Kitao Shigemasa may be called the great chameleon of the Ukioye School: a discriminating chameleon, who chose only the greatest artists of each decade from whom to take his changing hue. As M. Raymond Koechlin expresses it, "it was his destiny to reflect in his art the art of the most original of his contemporaries." Born about 1740, he lived until 1819. His teacher was Shigenaga; this master died not long after Shigemasa commenced work with him. Thus Shigemasa began painting early enough to be influenced by the last of the Primitives; and his first prints, dating from about 1764, are graceful three-colour renderings of actor-themes in the manner of Kiyomitsu, and more brutal ones in the manner of Kiyomasu. With the rise of Harunobu and the perfection of polychrome printing, Shigemasa turned to that style; later he followed Koriusai, in whose manner he produced some wonderfully beautiful large sheets of women and some fine pillar-prints. Still later he followed the style of Shunsho. Together with this artist he produced in 1786 a set of ten small sheets representing the various stages of sericulture, in which he surpasses his collaborator. The same two artists hadearlier collaborated, in 1776, to produce the famous illustrated book "Mirror of the Beauties of the Green Houses." These illustrations are not signed; but comparing them with Shigemasa's portion of the sericulture series, which are signed separately by the two artists, we may well believe that a large part of the peculiar grace of the "Green Houses" is Shigemasa's and not Shunsho's contribution. With Shunsho and Toyoharu, he collaborated in a series of designs for the twelve months, of which I have already spoken under Toyoharu. Like so many other artists of this period, Shigemasa gradually withdrew from work in the eighties before the blaze of Kiyonaga's glory. Kiyonaga himself was perhaps influenced by the older artist.
Shigemasa's draughtsmanship is the one quality that marks him through all his changes; from first to last, it is superb. With a fine firmness and ease he produces, as inPlate 18, designs in which restraint combines with great expressiveness. His faces have repose and distinction; his draperies are drawn with notable simplicity and dignity; his cool and quiet colour is admirable. Through all his styles runs a fastidious delicacy of feeling, and what Fenollosa terms "an even mastery." He never attempted the impossible or strained towards the unattainable; all his work has the stamp of a calmly working, reserved, confident artist. The deliberate, flawless craftsmanship of his works places him beside the greatest.
Considering the length of his career, he produced surprisingly little work; important prints by him are now rarer than those of any other artist of thisperiod. His pillar-prints, which are particularly fine, have been for many years proverbially few. As a rule only his earlier prints are signed. His surimono are, however, generally signed with the brush-name Kosuisai. Sheets from his numerous books are often mounted as separate prints. Collectors differ in their opinions as to whether it is advisable thus to take to pieces the sheets of a bound volume, such as the "Green Houses." Any such act, in dealing with art treasures, should be approached only after careful consideration; but it seems in this case a desirable method of preserving and exhibiting what are, after all, wholly separate pictures.
VTHE THIRDPERIOD:KIYONAGAAND HISFOLLOWERSFROM THEMATURITY OF KIYONAGATO HIS RETIREMENT(1780-1790)
From the Maturity of Kiyonaga to his Retirement (1780-1790).
With the fully developed and complex technique which had been brought to perfection by the time of Harunobu's death, the colour-print took on a new richness of expression and reached its culmination in the Third Period.
Generalizations attempting to define the difference between the work of this and the preceding periods are perilous; but we shall perhaps not be venturing too dangerously if we summarize the change of attitude as a step toward naturalism combined with a deepening of ideal significance.
In the period of the Primitives the artistic impulse was almost wholly one of decoration—an attempt to express in line and colour the great themes of design that stirred within the brain of the artist. The Primitives were inspired by what Von Seidlitz calls the desire of "presenting single characteristic motives of movement." Their creations had no relation to observed fact or to an exact rendering ofNature; they were the shadows of lofty dreams of form projected by the luminous spirit of the artist against the wall of space.
The designs of the Second Period, though hardly more realistic than those of the First, were nevertheless nearer life. The delights and passions of real men, even though fancifully regarded, coloured the conception of the artist as he approached his work; so that we find in Harunobu the exquisite joys, in Shunsho the terrific revolts, and in Buncho the super-sensible longings of the heart. Yet it is all symbolistic, all fictional, and nothing real is portrayed; the sharply limited world of these prints is a world of imagination from which no paths of communication open to regions of everyday. The perception of these artists did not enter into and interpret the seen earth; absorbed in the creation of a personal dream, it imposed its arbitrary categories upon objects from without, and had little respect for their intrinsic beauty. With magic incantations, the designer shattered the forms of the real world to bits and whimsically remoulded them nearer to the heart's desire. This attitude—a mixture of adolescence, playfulness, and vision—may be described by the phrase "naïvely imaginative."
The decorative impulse of the Primitives and the naïvely imaginative impulse of the Early Polychrome masters changed in the Third Period to a different variety of inspiration—the naturalistic and interpretive. By naturalistic and interpretive, I mean the attempt to seize a number of detached elements of observed life and weave them into a design thatreports not only the idiosyncrasies of the artist, but also some sense of the deep nature of the elements themselves. The artists of this period, while mastering the decorative impulse of the Primitives and the imaginative freedom of the Early Polychrome masters, found reality more interesting and more worthy of faithful attention than did their predecessors. Buncho flew off at a tangent to life on the wings of geometrical design, but Shuncho lingers observant among beautiful women in quiet gardens: Harunobu abandoned the real world for his harmonious dreams of colour, but Kiyonaga weaves into harmonies the perfect forms which his creative imagination evokes from the imperfect forms of actual men.
The earlier artists had hinted at landscape backgrounds; this period was the first to go farther and relate the landscape pictorially and spacially to the figures. The world of these designs is no longer the world of a lovely but private dream; we seem to enter a region as wide and free as life itself, inhabited by groups of superb and gracious figures that are as unforgettable as the Greek gods.
This period may be regarded as one of those few moments of equilibrium in the history of art when the spiritual dominance of the artist and the claims of real fact meet in a perfect balance. Toward one extreme lies fancifulness; toward the other extreme, realism; and in the centre, this narrow isle of quiet where the two forces join in harmony. Since man lives neither by bread alone nor by dreams alone, the moments when he reconciles the claims of his visionswith the facts he must face are the high peaks in his history. Mind and matter, hope and experience, longing and limitation, for an instant combine in a reconciliation that interprets and ennobles his environment. This is art's maturity, its fine and perfect flower.
All these things are implicit in the prints of Kiyonaga prime. He who can take pleasure in the Hermes of Praxiteles or the Fête Champêtre of Giorgione will not find the meaning of Kiyonaga's noble figures hard to read.
In examining the work of Kiyonaga and his contemporaries, it will be impossible to ignore the fact that during this and the succeeding period the foremost artists found the chief themes for their designs among the Oiran, or courtesans of the Yoshiwara. Nor can we omit some consideration of the curious position of these women. Such an inquiry has not the unpleasant features that a similar inquiry would have were the scene Europe. In the Japan of the late eighteenth century the typical Oiran was no creature of the mire, but a cultivated and splendid figure whose mental charm was as great as her physical attractiveness. The poet and the painter, the student and the young aristocrat, found in her no unworthy companion; and as she strides glowing through the designs of Kiyonaga or Shuncho she seems rather a beloved of the gods than a mistress of men.