PAINTING
In a general survey of the arts of Japan it will be best to begin with
the art of painting. In a land of paradoxes there is this paradox
regarding Japanese art, that while their pictorial art is the most
decorative of all pictorial arts, yet their decorative art is the most
pictorial of all decorative arts. For the Japanese decorative artist
rarely or never uses ornament merely as ornament; it almost invariably
represents something more than mere beauty of line, mass, or colour;
there is usually some pictorial motive attached. The lacquerer, for
instance, rarely uses purely conventional forms, but flowers, birds,
figures, even landscapes, make up his schemes of decoration. It
follows, then, that the decorative arts of Japan are dominated by, and
indeed are based upon, its pictorial art, and, therefore, the necessary
preliminary to their consideration is a study of the art of painting.
The European’s introduction to the study of Japanese art is apt to be
rather misleading, for in all probability the first specimens which
come under his notice are the colour prints and paintings of the
naturalistic and decorative schools of the last century. His first
shock of surprise overcome, for both the medium and the style of
presentment are new and strange, he speedily discovers in them real
beauties. Harmonies of line and colour, finer and more subtle than
any we have to show, arouse his enthusiasm, and he thinks that he has
penetrated the mysteries of Japanese art, and that all its treasures
lie before him. Even were it so the boon would be no small one; but,
as a matter of fact, he merely stands upon the threshold. The real
glories of Japanese painting are the works of hundreds of years ago.
As well could one judge of the glories of English literature from the
ephemeral periodicals of the day as of the painting of old Japan from
the products of the more materialistic schools of recent years. To know
English literature one must read the classics; to realise its full
glory we must go back to Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton. And so with
Japanese art, we must go back to the works of the old masters--to
Cho Densu with his amazing power, to Sesshiu with his wonderful dream
landscapes--ere we realise its grandeur. Then we feel that, beautiful
pieces of decoration though the modern works are, here we breathe a
purer and a finer air; we are in another world, a nobler and a greater
one. The finest landscapes in the world are those painted by the old
Chinese and Japanese artists; monochromes, slight and shadowy as
morning mist, but breathing the very poetry of nature.
[Illustration: ARHAT AND LION
From a Kakemono by CHO DENSU
(_British Museum_)]
The art of painting was borrowed by Japan from China, the first
teachers being the Buddhist priests who crossed over from Korea in the
sixth century. This origin, and also the nature of the materials used
in the art, stamped it at the outset with qualities which have ever
since distinguished it. The ordinary instrument for writing in China
and Japan was the brush, dipped in Indian ink, and to form the native
characters was in itself an exercise in drawing. Caligraphy, indeed,
as penmanship in the old days of mediæval Europe, was reckoned as one
of the fine arts; or rather, from the Chinese point of view, painting
was reckoned one of the branches of caligraphy. This caligraphic basis
is the root of most of the conventions of Chinese and Japanese
painting, and in the quality of the brush work are to be discovered
many of its beauties. For by means of line alone, not a pen line,
thin and hard, but the supple, swelling line of the brush, the artist
not only renders the outlines and shapes of things but suggests
modelling, chiaroscuro, even the different planes of distance, in a
manner indefinable in its subtlety. Colour, except in the later and
more naturalistic schools, is used in flat tints only. This absence of
chiaroscuro is often quoted as a defect of Japanese art; but if all
that can be said has been expressed by line why add light and shade?
One has only to study the work of one of their masters in the use of
the brush, such an one as Motonobu, of the Kano school, to understand
not only how unnecessary it would be but how impossible. We would as
soon wish to see filled in one of the exquisite outlines of Flaxman. It
is like setting a beautiful poem to music: you may exchange one melody
for another, but both cannot exist together. And we must remember that
all use of line is a convention, for line does not exist in nature, and
Japanese art, after all, only differs in this respect from European
art in having used this convention with greater freedom and more
consummate mastery.
The simplicity of the means at the artist’s disposal--a brush or two,
Indian ink, a few liquid colours, and a sheet of paper or silk--tended
to produce directness and simplicity of effect, and this tendency was
increased by another influence. The Buddhist priests, then as now, were
of a type of mind essentially idealistic. Their religion taught them
to regard the spiritual essence of things as the great fact and the
outward and visible world as merely a temporary and changing phase,
and so in their art, for they were the first painters, they aimed
not at a literal transcription of nature but at an expression of its
inner significance. And this training has always affected the attitude
of Japanese art. Directness, reticence, and restraint are its main
characteristics. To present the essential quality of a scene, not its
mere outward appearance, and that with the least possible obtrusion of
the material, was its object.
Even in later days, in their more naturalistic studies, the Japanese
artist never dreamt of drawing direct from nature as we do. His
system, the system by which children still learn to draw in Japan, was
to look steadily at the object to be depicted until it was learned by
heart and could be reproduced at will.
In painting the artist seats himself on the floor, the sheet of silk
or paper before him. For a while he gazes abstractedly, till the whole
picture is clear to his mental vision. Then with the first touch the
central point of interest--the eye of a bird, say--is indicated.
Swiftly and surely, with a full brush, the rest of the subject is
filled in. There is no niggling, no retouching, for the delicate,
absorbent surface of the silk will not stand repeated workings. Each
stroke is placed on the picture direct as it is to remain, and, though
the result may be a masterpiece, the work, in many cases, is that of a
few minutes. The technique of the brush has, indeed, been carried to a
degree of perfection by the Japanese artist otherwise unheard of. He
fills it, or it may be in the case of a large brush each part of it,
with just as little or as much ink or colour as he desires, carefully
arranges the hairs in a certain way, for the preparation and loading of
the brush is often as important as the actual brush stroke, and then
with one single sweep obtains the whole effect he requires. Many are
the wonderful tales of the feats which the old masters could perform
with one stroke of the brush.
A word may here be said as to the forms which pictorial art assumes in
Japan.
The first and most common form is the kakemono, or hanging picture,
formed of a sheet of silk or paper, richly mounted on brocade of
various colours. It is furnished with rollers like a map, and is
rolled up tightly when not in use. This is bad for the surface of the
painting, cracks being inevitable if much body colour has been used,
but it is a great protection against the fires which are so frequent in
the light wooden houses of Japan; for, as there is a considerable space
between the picture and the top of the mount, several layers of brocade
and tough mounting paper are thus tightly wound round the painting.
[Illustration: AN IMPRESSIONIST LANDSCAPE
From a Makimono by SESSON
(_British Museum_)]
The two ribbons, which so pleasantly break the monotony of the upper
part of the mount, are not merely ornamental. When the moving screens
forming the side of the house have been moved back for coolness, and
the kakemono hangs in the open air, the _futai_, as these ribbons
are called, flap in the breeze, and prevent birds from alighting on the
upper roller.
The makimono, or horizontal roll, is largely used for historical scenes
or for landscape sketches, the series, many feet long, often forming
one continuous composition. It is not hung up but laid on the floor,
and unrolled and examined bit by bit, as we would look at the pictures
in a book. Originally the kakemono was exclusively used for sacred, and
the makimono for secular, subjects, but this distinction has long since
ceased to exist.
A third form, gaku, is stretched on a frame, after the manner of our
pictures, but is little used.
Screens, both folding and sliding, were greatly used for the longer and
more important pictures. Sometimes a screen of five or six panels will
be so treated that while the whole forms one composition yet each panel
taken separately also forms a complete picture. Books, each page stiff
and opening on a hinge like a miniature screen, are also used. Lastly,
mural decorations on wood or plaster, and the dainty little paintings
on fans, complete the forms of pictorial art most in vogue in Japan.
Some time about the end of the fifth or the beginning of the sixth
century the Buddhist priests crossed over from Korea, and formed the
first Japanese school of painting, devoted almost entirely to the
sacred subjects which were used to decorate the Buddhist shrines. Very
beautiful and dignified are many of these old Butsugwa paintings,
recalling in their rich, full colour and their lavish use of gold the
illuminations and early paintings of our European monasteries. In
most cases they are unsigned, the holy man deeming it unfitting that
objects intended for such sacred uses should be contaminated by earthly
associations. The British Museum collection contains several fine
specimens, which, though faded and sadly blackened with incense fumes,
show these early works worthy to compare, for elevation of tone and
religious fervour, with the finest works of Christian art.
For many years this Buddhist school of painting continued, its
traditions lasting without a break until the fifteenth century. And
here at the outset it will be well to call attention to a difficulty
which arises in any attempt to give a brief and clear account of the
history of painting in Japan. The matter is complicated by the fact
that, though the different schools of painting are evolved one from
the other, the later did not supersede the earlier form, but usually
both continued to exist contemporaneously. Many artists painted in the
styles of more than one school, the manner often being decided by the
choice of subject, and latterly it was part of the training of Japanese
artists to go through all the schools.
Then, again, some of the greatest masters, especially those of the
last two centuries, formed their styles by adopting and combining what
appeared to them best in each school. To follow out logically the
growth of the various schools, and at the same time to treat of the
different artists in a chronological order, is, therefore, a matter of
some difficulty.
The oldest picture in Japan of which there is any authentic record was
painted, probably by a Korean priest in the beginning of the seventh
century, on the plaster wall of the Buddhist temple Horiuji at Nara,
a storehouse filled with treasures of ancient art. For three hundred
years little more is known--the names of a few priests and one or two
priceless paintings are all that remain; but by the ninth century
civilisation had reached an advanced stage, the country was rich and
prosperous, and entered into a great literary and artistic epoch. The
poets Narihira and Komachi, still ranked among the immortals, were
contemporaries of Kosé no Kanaoka, the first great secular painter of
Japan, and, if the double evidence of popular legend and the verdict
of critics and artists of his own and later days is to be believed,
the greatest of all Japanese artists. About a dozen examples, said
to be by Kanaoka, exist, but, one by one, the genuineness of each
has been questioned by experts. Perhaps the most authentic is the
portrait of Shotoku Daishi at the Ninnaji temple in Kioto, which has
been reproduced in colours in the _Kokkwa_, the Japanese Government
publication. Although nearly all the existing pictures attributed to
him are Buddhistic figure pieces, Kanaoka’s popular reputation was
based on his paintings of secular subjects, portraits, landscapes, and
animals. He was especially famous as a painter of horses.
The story goes that in a certain temple hung a painting by Kanaoka of
a magnificent black steed. The peasants in the neighbourhood were much
annoyed by the ravages of some wild animal, which nightly raided their
gardens, eating the herbs and trampling the flowers. At last they lay
in wait, and found to their surprise that the intruder was a huge
black horse. On their pursuing it disappeared into the temple, but when
they followed the building was empty. As they stood below the picture
great drops of sweat fell down, and there was Kanaoka’s horse all hot
and steaming. Then one of them had a happy idea. Seizing a brush he
rapidly painted in a rope tethering it to a post, and the gardens were
no more invaded by the nocturnal visitor.
The work of the immediate followers of Kanaoka seemed to be chiefly
Buddhistic in style, but this may only mean that the only specimens
which have survived the ravages of time are those sacred pieces which
were safely stored in the temples, and that, like Kanaoka, they were
equally at home in secular subjects.
In the tenth century Kasuga no Motomitsu founded the first purely
native school, called the Yamato school, which afterwards, under the
name of the Tosa school, became the recognised style for the treating
of historical subjects.
The eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries formed a period of
great literary and artistic activity. Buddhism was then in the height
of its power, and there is no greater period than this in the history
of Japanese art, but of these old masters we know little more than the
names. In the twelfth century we have Takuma Shoga, Sumiyoshi Keion,
and Toba Sojo, the last a marvellous animal painter, but examples of
their work are practically unknown out of Japan. In the thirteenth
century we have Fujiwara no Nobuzané, of whose Buddhistic work the
British Museum has a fine specimen; and a hundred years later Kosé no
Korehisa, renowned as the greatest military painter of Japan.
In 1351 was born a truly great artist, Meicho, or Cho Densu, whom some
rank as the equal of Kanaoka himself. A Buddhist priest, he was famed
for his sanctity, and the bulk of his works are of a religious nature,
to which field he did much to bring new life and vigour, for the school
had relapsed into the dull repetition of cut-and-dry formulas. But in
secular subjects he was equally great. The British Museum is fortunate
enough to possess a masterpiece by Cho Densu--a figure of an Arhat
seated with a lion at his feet. The whole picture is presented with
extraordinary force. The attention is seized and held by the eyes of
the figure as they stare fixedly at the lion, which, with head thrown
back and gums bared, glares savagely in return. The drawing is superb
in its easy power, the colour rich and sombre, its highest note in the
bright red of the lion’s jaws.
A new influence arose with the Chinese renaissance of the fifteenth
century, and we come to the times of the great landscape painters.
Nothing could be further removed from the attitude of the modern
European landscapist than that of these old Chinese and Japanese
masters. Their object was not to depict a scene in a naturalistic
manner but to convey its inmost spirit. In speaking of a painter of
a later day a Japanese critic writes: “But in his landscape there
is less success, as he was so particular about ensuring correctness
of forms that they were lacking in high ideas and deep spirit. For
a landscape painting is not loved because it is a facsimile of the
natural scene but because there is something in it greater than
mere accurate representation of natural forms, which appeals to our
feelings, but which we cannot express in words.” It is this deeper and
inner art which the old landscapists give us. In monochrome, or with
a few sombre tints added, they suggest the beauty, the repose, and the
dignity of nature in a way that, to my mind, no landscape painters have
done before or since. One little Chinese landscape especially lingers
in my memory, though it was not the original I saw, only one of the
delicate collotypes which can only be produced in Japan. It was called
“The Evening Bell.” On the strip of soft, brown-tinted silk is faintly
touched a range of peaks against the sky; nearer is a grove of trees.
Mist lies in the hollows and softens the forms, and in the distance,
amid the tree-tops, peeps out a temple roof. Nothing could be slighter
or yet more complete.
The old Chinese style, so strongly marked in the work of the old
painter priests, had gradually fallen into disuse before the more
popular Tosa style, when Josetsu, a Chinese painter, settled in Japan
early in the fifteenth century. Little is known of Josetsu’s own work;
but his influence soon began to make itself felt, and he gathered
round him a band of pupils. Of these the most famous is Shiubun, a
Buddhist priest, still regarded as one of the greatest of Japanese
landscape painters. The British Museum contains a very fine painting
attributed to him, though expert criticism rather inclines to assign it
to a somewhat later period.
[Illustration: A LANDSCAPE IN THE CHINESE STYLE
By SESSHIU
(_British Museum_)]
Shiubun had two brilliant pupils, Oguri Sotan and No-ami, the first
a priest, a fine landscapist, and a wonderful painter of birds and
flowers; the second a brilliant and versatile man of the world,
courtier, poet, caligraphist, critic, and painter. In the last capacity
he was especially renowned for his paintings of tigers. No-ami had a
son Gei-ami and a grandson So-ami, both of whom, especially the latter,
became famous landscapists of the Chinese school.
But the most famous of all the masters of the Chinese renaissance is
Sesshiu, born 1420, died 1506, one of the greatest of all Japanese
painters. As a youth he entered a Buddhist temple, but his thoughts
were often far away from his religious duties. The story goes that
once, as a punishment for some fault, he was tied to a pillar of the
temple. With tears for ink, and using his toe as a brush, he sketched
some rats on the floor, and as each was completed it sprang up, and
began to gnaw through the rope that bound him. On the approach of the
chief priest they scampered away; but the good monk was so impressed
by the miracle that the youthful artist was henceforth allowed to
follow his own bent.
At the age of forty Sesshiu, satisfied that he had learned all he could
from the artists of his native country, went to China to study under
the masters there, but to his surprise and discouragement he found none
there who could teach him more than he already knew. Then said he:
“Nature shall be my teacher; I shall go to the woods, the mountains,
and the streams and learn from them.” So for some time he travelled
in China painting and studying nature. His fame soon spread through
the land, and the Chinese artists, frankly acknowledging him as their
master, came to him for instruction. By the Emperor himself he was
commissioned to paint a series of panels on the walls of the palace at
Pekin, and on one of these, to mark his Japanese origin, the artist has
placed a view of Fujisan.
It is by his landscapes that Sesshiu is best known, and never was
the grandeur and the dignity of nature more fully expressed; but his
figure subjects, notably the magnificent painting of Jurojin, the
god of longevity, reproduced in the _Kokkwa_, and, in the British
Museum collection, a wonderful study of Hotei, the god of contentment,
frolicking with some children, must be seen before his full scope and
great power can be realised. For he was in every sense a great painter;
in each department his work is marked by lofty conception, great
breadth of treatment, and an absolute certainty and ease of execution.
His brushwork is very distinctive, and even by the novice may be
recognised at a glance. Strong and vigorous, but angular and jagged
like forked lightning, it often seems rude and clumsy when examined
closely, but it never so asserts itself when we step back and look at
the _picture_, but expresses exactly the effect intended. The British
Museum possesses several very fine specimens of Sesshiu’s work. Even of
the most famous of his pupils--Shiugetsu, Sesson, and Keishoki--space
will not permit us to deal. Mention must be made, however, of a
makimono by Sesson. It consists of eight views in monochrome roughly
dashed off. Nothing could be more sketchy than the treatment or yet
more vigorous. It is a veritable _tour de force_ of caligraphic
impressionism.
A secondary result of the Chinese renaissance was the foundation of
the Kano school, which, based on the broad, caligraphic methods of the
Chinese masters, gradually adapted them to their own use, evolving a
freer and looser style of handling distinctly Japanese. The founder
of the school was Kano Masanobu. When the artist Oguri Sotan died, in
1469, he was engaged in the decoration of the walls of the temple of
Kinkakuji at Kioto, and, on Sesshiu’s recommendation, Masanobu, then
only known as an amateur, was engaged to finish the work.
[Illustration: SHORIKEN CROSSING THE SEA ON HIS SWORD
From a Kakemono by MOTONOBU
(_British Museum_)]
Masanobu’s son Motonobu was even more famous, and to him is due the
credit of forcing the new school into public favour. Born in 1477,
in his youth he wandered over the country, carrying little but his
brushes, painting everything he saw, and paying his way with the
results. But those lean years of poverty and study stood him in good
stead. Fortune smiled at last, and he became the most popular painter
of his day. Goto Yujo, the famous metal worker, adopted his designs
for sword ornaments, his painted fans were chosen as ceremonial gifts
to the Mikado and Shogun, and, to crown all, Mitsushigé, the head of
the exclusive and aristocratic Tosa school, gave him the hand of his
daughter in marriage. He died, full of years and honours, in 1559.
For landscape, birds, and figure subjects he is equally famous, and as
a master of the brush he is unsurpassed. In the work of the Chinese
schools the quality of line, though often striking, is used in a more
reticent way, entirely as a means to an end; but in the Kano school
the line becomes a thing of beauty and life, almost an end in itself.
The astonishing power and sweep of Motonobu’s line may be seen to
perfection in the Shoriken in the British Museum.
During the sixteenth century the Kano school numbered many famous
names. Yeitoku, a grandson of Motonobu, became the favourite painter
of the Shogun Hideyoshi. Kaihoku Yusho was noted for his beautiful
misty effects; and more famous, perhaps, than either is Kimura
Sanraku. Sanraku was at first a page in the service of Hideyoshi, who,
discovering his talent, sent him to study under Yeitoku. His work has
all the dash and swing of the Kano style, and his colouring is rich
and harmonious, while his line is almost worthy to rank with that of
Motonobu. Sanraku’s adopted son Sansetsu carried on the tradition
of the family, though his work has more of the restrained quality
of Sesshiu and his followers than the dash of his more immediate
predecessors. The British Museum has a beautiful rainy landscape by
Sansetsu, slight in treatment--only some dim hills drenched in misty
rain, with the suggestion of a bridge and a stream and a fisherman’s
cottage--but everything, even the cottage roof, looks wet. (See
frontispiece.)
In the beginning of the seventeenth century the Kano school took a
new lease of life with the advent of the three brothers, grandsons of
Yeitoku, Tanyu, Naonobu, and Yasunobu.
Of the three, Tanyu is the most famous, and is recognised as one of
the greatest masters of the Kano school. He is distinctly a painter’s
painter, and delights in what we should call fireworks. Handling his
brush with careless ease he makes a smudge, a few blots, and a swirl,
and behold a landscape! A very Japanese Whistler; but it marks the
difference between the two publics that, while Whistler is with us
still “caviare to the general,” the Japanese substitute is one of the
most popular of all their painters. His two large pictures of Kwannon,
however, in the British Museum, stamp him as no mere swaggerer but
a great and serious artist. In the private collection of Mr Arthur
Morrison are two magnificent sixfold landscape screens, which show
him to rank with the first of Japanese landscape painters, and, among
other unique examples of his work, a dainty little study of birds and
convolvulus, touched with the utmost lightness and delicacy.
[Illustration: KWANNON, THE GODDESS OF MERCY
From a Kakemono by TANYU
(_British Museum_)]
Naonobu, the second brother, died at an early age, and from this
cause, and from the fact that he seemed to spend much of his time in
hunting out and destroying his earlier work, his paintings are rarer
than Tanyu’s. There could hardly be a greater contrast than the work
of the two brothers--the first exulting in its strength, and full of a
superb recklessness and dash; the second restrained and quiet, though
not lacking in force, and full of a soft, liquid quality. Some charming
examples of his work are in the British Museum.
The third brother, Yasunobu, was known chiefly for his landscapes, full
of delicacy and feeling, and recalling the work of Sesshiu and
Sansetsu.
Naonobu’s son Tsunenobu, born in 1636, was a worthy successor, and, in
the opinion of many, is worthy to be ranked with Tanyu and the other
great men of the Kano school.
Then we have one of the most striking personalities among Japanese
painters--Hanabusa Itcho, the last of the great Kano painters. A born
humorist, his faculty for practical joking was always getting him into
trouble. Indeed, on more than one occasion he found himself in prison
owing to liberties he had taken in the pictorial representation of
those in high authority. But he is no mere caricaturist. His drawings
are pictures first and humorous afterwards, and as a colourist he ranks
high even in Japan.
Another pupil of Yasunobu was Sotatsu, one of the greatest flower
painters of Japan. He also studied under Sumiyoshi Jokei, a Tosa
painter, but can hardly be classed with either of these schools.
It must not be supposed, however, that with the coming of the Sesshiu
and Kano schools the old Tosa style had been driven out. It continued
to exist alongside the newer schools, and many artists changed from one
style to the other according to subject. The Tosa school at this time
was distinguished by a minuteness of detail, and also by a richness
of colour which gradually came to affect the Kano artists, whose work
became much brighter in colour as time went on. Sesshiu, Masanobu,
and Motonobu worked chiefly in monochrome, using colour sparingly; but
Sanraku’s work, a hundred years later, is full of fresh, bright tints.
A curious convention of the Tosa painters in their historical subjects
was to leave out the roof of a house in order to expose the interior to
view.
[Illustration: BIRD AND PINE BRANCH
From a Kakemono by NAONOBU
(_British Museum_)]
We now come to Ogata Korin, one of the most individual of all Japanese
artists. Born in 1661, he is said to have studied under Yasunobu, and
the influence of Sotatsu seems to appear in his work; but he can be
classed with no existing school, striking out an entirely new line for
himself. A wonderful draughtsman, Korin possessed in the highest degree
the Japanese faculty for spacing and balance. Slight, and often almost
bizarre, as his compositions are, one feels that it would be impossible
to alter a line. He is more frankly decorative than any of his
predecessors, and is even more famous as a lacquerer than a painter.
Indeed, often in his painting, especially in the enamel-like quality
of his colour effects, one sees the hand of the lacquerer rather than
the painter. Japan, perhaps, possesses one or two greater artists, but
none more original, or whose work exercises a more subtle fascination.
To commemorate the centenary of his death his follower Hoitsu issued
several volumes of woodcuts from the master’s designs. Slight as these
are they are never trivial, nothing is expressed but what is necessary,
the non-essentials are absolutely ignored, and the results are masterly
in their telling arrangements of black and white.
We must now retrace our steps a little and return to the beginning of
the seventeenth century, when Iwasa Matabei founded the style which was
known as the Ukioyé, or “pictures of the passing world” school, and
which soon became the great popular school of painting. The distinction
between the Ukioyé and the older classical schools, however, was not
one merely of subject. Many of the earlier men had turned to the
scenes of everyday life for their subjects. Toba Sojo, Sanraku, and
Itcho, to name but a few, and, on the other hand, the Ukioyé painters,
frequently treated of classical subjects. The real difference is one
of treatment, not of subject, and the starting-point of variance
was the mental attitude of the painter. It was a departure from the
subjective attitude of the older men. The Ukioyé and later schools took
the standpoint of the poet: “The earth--that is sufficient; I do
not want the constellations any nearer”--and their works are frankly
decorative or frankly naturalistic. Materialists, in a sense, they
turn from the beauties of the ideal world to show us the beauties of
the natural world around us. This does not necessarily mean that their
treatment was what we term realistic; but, while with the classical
schools one looked through the picture, as it were, to the thought
beyond, in this case one looks at the picture for the beauty which it
presents, and which is inherent in the subject itself. The fact that
the rise of the Ukioyé school was more or less a popular revolt against
the old classical traditions which had governed the art for a thousand
years will help to explain to us why its masters were hardly esteemed
as highly by the cultured classes in Japan as, by their undoubtedly
fine qualities, they deserved to be. On the other hand, we must admit
that they never attain to the power and dignity of the older schools.
[Illustration: FLOWER PANEL
By KORIN
(_From a Woodcut in the Korin Hiakuzu_)]
The works of Matabei are excessively rare. He was a fine draughtsman,
his figures of dancing girls being particularly graceful in line and of
quiet, harmonious colouring.
The next great artist of the school was Hishigawa Moronobu, who
flourished during the latter part of the seventeenth century. Formerly
a designer of embroideries, the inexhaustible fancy with which he
adorns the costumes of his figures adds a special charm to his work,
and his drawing of the figure is marked by a wonderful lightness and
grace. He was the first artist of importance to devote himself to
the production of the woodcut prints which afterwards attained such
popularity, and during the next two hundred years became a separate
branch of art industry.
During the eighteenth century the school obtained many adherents, whom,
for lack of space, we can do no more than name. Torii Kiyonobu, the
first of the Torii artists, noted for their treatment of theatrical
subjects; Miyagawa Choshun, Nishikawa Sukenobu, Okumura Masanobu,
Nishimura Shigenaga, and Suzuki Harunobu are but a few. But as most of
these painters of the Ukioyé school were more famous as producers of
colour prints we shall leave their further consideration to the next
chapter.
[Illustration: MONKEYS AND PLUM BLOSSOM
From a Kakemono by SOSEN
(_British Museum_)]
A great painter of the eighteenth century who did not follow the Ukioyé
or older schools, but, like Korin, struck out a line of his own, was
Tani Buncho, who was born in 1763 and died in 1841. As a painter of
landscapes, figures, birds, and flowers he was equally a master.
Another artist who struck out for himself is Maruyama Okio, 1733-1795,
sometimes regarded as the founder of the Shijo or naturalistic school.
According to the old critics, “the art of painting may be pursued
according to either of two systems: the one in which the spirit of
nature is expressed; the other in which its outward forms are copied.”
Okio broke away from the old traditional method, and instead of
endeavouring to interpret Nature endeavoured to so present Nature that
she should deliver her own message. His favourite subjects were birds,
fish, and flowers, and in their naturalistic treatment are more akin
to European work than that of his predecessors, though in grace and
elegance they are still essentially Japanese.
In the hands of his followers the Shijo or naturalistic school soon
became popular. Even more famous than Okio was Mori Sosen, 1747-1821,
now recognised as one of the world’s greatest animal painters. He is
especially noted for his paintings of monkeys, whose habits he studied
for years, often living in the woods for months at a time. He has two
styles: one rough and bold, generally on paper; the other on silk, and
often of extraordinary delicacy and fineness. That his abilities were
not by any means confined to the depicting of monkeys may be seen from
his exquisite studies of deer and other animals.
To landscape Mori Ippo applied the principles of the Shijo school,
employing a much more naturalistic colouring than had hitherto been the
custom, and Hoyen depicted birds, flowers, and insects with charming
delicacy and refinement.
In 1749 was born another great independent artist--Ganku, who founded a
school of his own, combining with the naturalism of the new something
of the suavity and dignity of the older styles.
Though treating of him more fully in the next chapter mention must be
made here of the great Hokusai--in Whistler’s words, “the greatest
pictorial artist since Vandyke.” To European ears his name is more
familiar than that of any other Japanese artist. As a draughtsman he
ranks with the very first, and as a painter his brushwork was bold and
free and often masterly, though lacking just the grace and finish of
the old Kano masters, and, at its best, his colour is superb. Some of
his figure subjects have the grandiose quality of a Velasquez. His
versatility was extraordinary, every style of subject coming within the
range of his brush.
[Illustration: A PEACOCK
From a Kakemono by IPPO
(_British Museum_)]
Of nineteenth century painters the greatest is Kikuchi Yosai, the last
of the great painters of Japan. In his youth he studied in all the
schools, and afterwards made a tour through the country studying the
great pictures stored in the various temples. His own style is strongly
individual, combining the dignity of the older schools with the realism
and rich colouring of the modern. A fine example in the British Museum
is his painting of Fukurokujiu, the god of longevity--an old, old
man with worn, wrinkled features. It is said to be a portrait of the
artist, and was painted in his eighty-fifth year. He had many pupils
but no successors; and on his death, in 1878, the only painters worthy
of mention are Zeshin, better known as a lacquerer, who died in 1891;
and Kawanabé Kiosai, a humorous draughtsman of remarkable dexterity,
who died in 1889.