all details are more or less subordinated. This rendering of the
momentary vision of life and light,—the spirit, not the letter of the
scene,—is what is meant by Impressionism. Whereas, however the French
impressionists express light by modelling surfaces, the Japanese adhere
rigidly to line, and rely upon gradations of colour and the effect of
washes to produce the illusion of light. Their landscape is expressed
in clear-cut lines and flat masses of colour. In the prints this virtue
of abstract line is exemplified, the outline being the essential
element of the composition, for upon line and arrangements of balanced
colour the artist must depend, cramped as he is by the necessities
of the wood-cut. And here he displays his wonderful ingenuity, his
fineness of gradations and opposition, his boldness and infinity of
device, and in spite of the limitations which hamper him, he realizes
absolute values in the narrowest range, by virtue of his knowledge of
lines and spaces.
[Illustration: Wistaria Viewing at Kameido. By Hiroshige.]
“No scientifically taught artist,” said Jarves, “can get into as few
square inches of paper a more distinct realization of space, distance,
atmosphere, perspective and landscape generally, not to mention
sentiment and feeling.”
This virtue of the line is the inheritance of the Japanese, the
consummate handling of the brush almost a racial instinct. From China,
far back in the centuries, came the sweeping calligraphic stroke,
of which in Japan the school of Kano became the noblest exponent.
“_L’école_,” said M. de Goncourt, “_des audaces et de la bravoure du
faire, l’école tantôt aux écrasements du pinceau, tantôt aux ténuités
d’un cheveu._”
As soon as the tiny hand of the Japanese baby can grasp the brush its
art education begins. The brush is the Japanese alphabet—it is their
fairy wand, their playmate—they learn to paint intuitively, though
later the most assiduous study is given to acquire the characteristic
touch of the school with which they affiliate. The brush is their
_génie_, subservient to their imagination; they master and “juggle”
with it. For no foreign taught technique will they barter their
birthright.
And our masters and instructors in art more and more recognize the
value of initial brush-work. The following excerpt from Walter Crane,
in _Line and Form_, might serve as a preface to a work on Hokusai or
Hiroshige: “The practice of forming letters with the brush afforded
a very good preliminary practice to a student of line and form. An
important attribute of line is its power of expressing or suggesting
movement. Undulating lines always suggest action and unrest or the
resistance of force of some kind. The firm-set yet soft feathers of a
bird must be rendered by a different touch from the shining scales of a
fish. The hair and horns of animals, delicate human features, flowers,
the sinuous lines of drapery, or the massive folds of heavy robes,
all demand from the draughtsman in line different kinds of suggestive
expression.”
We are told that Hiroshige began his career by making pictures in
coloured sands on an adhesive background, to amuse the public, and
perhaps this artistic juggling helped him later in arranging his
schemes of colour, for the limitations of the block demanded almost
equal simplicity in composition.
The impressions of Lake Biwa, one of Hiroshige’s finest series of
views, serve as a beautiful illustration of the almost exclusive use of
line in bringing out the salient characteristics of the landscape. His
sweeping brush shows us volcanic mountains, encircling the lake, like
rocky billows, torn and jagged, for legend says that as the peerless
mountain Fuji-san rose in one night, so the ground sank, and the space
was filled by the beautiful lake named from its resemblance in form to
the Japanese lute. The trees which fringe the shore, black and misty,
upon close inspection resolve themselves into a network of criss-cross
lines and blotches. The sampans’ sails, the waves, the rushes on the
shore, the roofs of the village nestling beneath the cliffs, are all
adroitly rendered by horizontal lines and skillful zigzags. The rest of
the composition is a wash of shaded blues and grays, fading towards the
horizon into smoky violets.
Biwa, the beautiful, suggestive of mystery, the four-stringed lute
gives thee her name. Through the music of thy rippling eddies do sighs
well up in thee, the murmur of the lost? A pall of darkness hovers over
thee, pierced by a gleam of sunshine, beckoning like a lover’s hand.
Much diversity of opinion exists with regard to the identity of the
artist, or artists, who designed the prints signed Hiroshige. The
latest research, however, justifies the assertion that there was but
one landscape painter, Hiroshige the Great.
The pupils,—notably one, who, among other names, signed Shigenobu,
until after his master’s death, when he took the title of Hiroshige
the Second, gradually assuming his full _nom-de-pinceau_, Hiroshige
Ichiryusai,—faithfully imitated his style, also amplifying the
multitudinous designs and sketches made by the master, yet the genius
of the great artist is stamped upon his work, and as a clever critic
tersely says: “Everything he touched was his autograph.”
Mr. John S. Happer, an indefatigable student of Ukiyo-ye and collector
of nishiki-ye gems, during diligent research, discovered a clew that
leads, beyond controversy, to the right attribution of the prints
signed Hiroshige, and which he intends later to make public. Nearly
all the important vertical sets, he says, most of which have been
ascribed to the second Hiroshige, are by the first artist, although
doubtless his pupils assisted him in his work, rendering their aid, as
did the pupils of Hokusai in the preparation of the Mang-wa. Hiroshige
also associated himself at times with other artists, one set of the
Kisokaido, for example, being in part the work of Keisai Yeisen, and
he supplied many backgrounds to the prints of Kunisada and Kuniyoshi.
In the catalogue of the “Collection Hayashi” only two prints are
assigned to pupils of Hiroshige, one of them bearing the signature of
Shigenobu.
The masterpieces signed Hiroshige are all by one great genius, the
Apostle of Impressionism. “Hiro, Hiro, Hiroshige, great is Hiroshige,”
cries Mr. Happer, in an outburst of enthusiasm. “Before Hiroshige there
was no Japanese landscape master,—after him there is none.”
In the “Happer” Collection is a memorial portrait of Hiroshige by
Kunisada (Toyokuni), the inscription upon which is of especial
interest, confirming, as it does, the date of his death and proving
that the “Meisho Yedo Hiak’kei,” the vertical set of Yedo views, so
often ascribed to his successor, were by the master.
The inscription is thus quaintly interpreted by a Japanese student:
“Ryusai Hiroshige is a distinguished follower of Toyohiro, who was a
follower of Toyoharu, the founder of the Utagawa School. At the present
time, Hiroshige, Toyokuni and Kuniyoshi are considered the three great
masters of Ukiyo-ye,—no others equal them. Hiroshige was especially
noted for landscape. In the Ansei era, 1854-1859, he published the
‘Meisho Yedo Hiak’kei’ (‘Hundred Views of Yedo’), which vividly present
the scenery of Yedo to the multitude of admirers.
“About this time also appeared a magazine entitled ‘Meisho Zuye’
(‘Sonnets on Yedo Scenes’), a monthly, illustrated by Hiroshige, and
displaying his wonderful skill with the brush, to the admiration
of the world. He passed away, to the world beyond, on the sixth day
of the ninth month of this year, 1858, at the ripe age of sixty-two
(sixty-one by our count). He left behind a last testament, or farewell
sonnet, ‘_Azuma ji ni fude wo no-koshite tabi no sora; Nishi no mi kuni
no Meisho wo Mimu._’ (Dropping the brush at Azuma, Eastern Capital, I
go the long journey to the Western Country, Buddhist Heaven is in the
West, to view the wonderful sceneries there; perchance to limn them
too.)
“This by Temmei Rojin, picture by Toyokuni.
“Dated, Ansei 5, ninth month (October, 1858).”
The best known prints by Hiroshige are the “Fifty-three Stations
between Yedo and Kyoto.” This Tokaido series was at first beautifully
printed, but the later impressions show a sad decay in the colouring.
The “Yedo Haik’kei” or “Hundred Views of Yedo,” give a panoramic vista
of the Shoguns’ capital. The pictorial description of Yedo, in black
and pale blue, is a lovely series. In many of these landscapes the
Dutch influence is very marked, for the master of Hiroshige, Toyohiro,
from whom he derived the first syllable of his _nom-de-pinceau_, had
experimented in landscape painting after the Dutch wood-cuts which
were scattered throughout the country. Although Hiroshige is best
known through his landscapes, he, like most Japanese painters, was
too universal an artist to confine himself solely to one branch. He
loved every phase of nature, and in one of his well-known prints,
“The Eagle,” his skill in the delineation of birds is best shown. In
the later impressions a pale yellowish tone takes the place of the
beautiful steel-blue background of the earlier prints, miracles of
colour printing.
Athwart this background of ineffable blue, which loses itself in the
mists that veil the sacred mountain, is seen, sweeping and sailing
cruelly alert, the evil eagle of Hiroshige. His wicked gaze is set on
nests of murmuring wood-doves, he eyes the callow sea-birds in their
bed of rushes. The temple bell rings solemnly; the long vibrations
cleave the azure dusk. It is the hour of rest and dreams. Begone, base
harbinger of evil!
In the early prints by Hiroshige the colours are most beautiful, one
soft tone fading imperceptibly into another, the blues and greens so
marvellously blended as to be almost interchangeable. We are told that
Michelangelo loved the companionship of the old workman who ground
his colours; and of the Japanese, it is said, “this making one family
of the greater artist and all who had to do with him has given that
peculiar completeness, that sense of peace and absence of struggle
which we feel in Japanese art.”
In vain Hiroshige fought, towards the middle of the nineteenth century,
against introduction of cheap and inferior pigments, which were taking
the place of the native dyes—Nature’s gifts, distilled by her artist
children. Reds, yellows, blues and greens, intense and crude, were now
imported, and Western commercialism sapped the virtue of the sincere
and devoted artists and artisans of the Orient.
In describing the effect of colour in one of the Nikko temples, W.
B. Van Ingen throws a searchlight upon the chemical secrets of this
splendour, which he tells us, if asked to describe in one word, that
word would be “golden.” “These colours,” he says, “are not imitations
of colours. If vermilion is used, it is cinnabar and not commercialized
vermilion which is employed, nor is something substituted for cobalt
because it is cheaper and will ‘do just as well.’ Each colour is used
because it is beautiful and frank as a colour, not because some other
colour is beautiful. If lacquer is the best medium to display the
beauty of the pigment, lacquer is used, and if water is better, lacquer
is discarded, and if these colours are not imitations of colours,
neither are they suggestions of colours. Pink is not used for red; if
it is used at all, it is used for its own beauty, and feeble bluish
washes are not made to do service for blue. The Oriental has not yet
learned the doctrine of substitution; he knows that substitution is
transformation.”
The secrets of colouring of the early prints, the joy of Parisian
studios and which inspired Whistler, are lost. The delicious greens
of old mosses, the pale rose tints, the veinings and marblings, the
iridescent tints of ocean shells, the luminous colours of the anemone,
the _bleus malades des mauves_—that divine violet, a benison of the
palette handed down by those old Buddhist monks, the earliest painters
of India and China.
These visions of colour are taking the place of obscurity and gloom,
for the great impressionists, Claude Monet, Manet, the Barbizon
school also and its disciples, have abjured the old dark shadows and
substituted violet washes, seeming to share the privilege with the
saints and sages of “seeing blue everywhere.” All true artists live
“within the sphere of the infinite images of the soul.” These seers are
their own masters, and, as Theodore Child says so exquisitely, “they
are of rare and special temperaments, and through their temperament
they look at nature and see beautiful personal visions. They fix their
visions in colour or marble and then disappear forever, carrying with
them the secrets of their mysterious intellectual processes.” Such a
special temperament was bequeathed to Whistler. He submitted himself to
the Japanese influence, not imitating but imbibing oriental methods,
and following them, notwithstanding Philistine clamour, for the
English art doctrines of the time were diametrically opposed to these
innovations. Regardless of sneers, he followed the bent of his genius,
which led him into oriental fields. He felt the sweet influence of such
artists as Hokusai and Hiroshige. He took advantage of the centuries
of thought given to drapery, in the land where, as with Greece, dress
is a national problem; where no fads and follies of fashion fostered
by commercialism are allowed; where the artists design dress, and the
people gratefully and sincerely adopt their ideas.
When we can follow them and allow art to rule, then hideous vagaries
and vulgarities, distortions of the figure by hoops and wires, and
monstrosities in sleeves will cease. Then may we hope to be an æsthetic
nation. We need our American Moronobus to design and embroider and
paint dresses for their beautiful and intuitively tasteful countrywomen.
The colour vision of the Oriental far surpasses our own. His eyes are
sensitive to colour harmonies which, applied to landscape, at first
seem unreal, impossible, until we realize that though they present
objects in hues intrinsically foreign to them, yet the result justifies
this arrangement, and its integrity is recognized, for the impression
we receive is the true one. And this chaotic massing of colour we
notice in a landscape by Hiroshige was employed by many of the old
masters. Of the stormy passion of Tintoret, Ruskin says: “He involves
his earth in coils of volcanic cloud, and withdraws through circle
flaming above circle the distant light of paradise.”
There is a keynote to art, as to music, and to genius; through the
inner vision this harmony is revealed. It lies within the precincts of
the soul, beyond the reach of talented mediocrity, however versed in
the canon of art. Nor can this occult gift be handed down. The most
ardent disciples of Raphael tried in vain to express themselves after
his pattern. The sublime inspiration which found its fullest outward
manifestation in the Sistine Madonna rested there. The poets realized
this colour vision, for Dante cried—
“Had I a tongue in eloquence as rich
As is the colouring in Fancy’s loom.”
Inspiration must be sought by other than mechanical means. Have not the
most inspired revelations of colour come to the great master, William
Keith, when, invoking the aid of his old temple bell, its lingering
vibrations yielded to him rich secrets of colour harmony, as the song
of the bell revealed to the soul of Schiller the mystery of life and
birth and death, which he crystallized in his immortal poem?
This is the keynote of Impressionism, the touchstone of art. What a
fairy wand was wafted by Whistler, standing upon Battersea Bridge! “The
evening mist,” he said, “clothes the riverside with poetry, as with a
veil, and the poor buildings lose themselves in the dim sky, and the
tall chimneys become Campanili, and the warehouses are palaces in the
night and the whole city hangs in the heavens, and fairyland is before
us!”
Leaning upon the bridge, the sweet influence of Hiroshige permeating
his soul, in the crucible of his fancy he blent with the radiant Orient
a vision of old London, grimy and age-worn, and realized “a Japanese
fancy on the banks of the gray Thames.” To this picture he set the
seal of his brother artist, and so the two apostles of Impressionism,
Occidental and Oriental, in that loveliest nocturne, will together go
down to posterity.
Analytical Comparisons
between the Masters of Ukiyo-ye.
It is difficult rightly to determine the distinguishing characteristics
of the noted artists of Ukiyo-ye: but the connoisseurs speak of the
extreme grace of pictorial line in Moronobu: the sweeping areas of
pattern in the garments of Kiyonobu and his followers, and their
forceful ways of outlining the folds of drapery, all full of meaning.
Grace and delicacy mark the idyllic compositions of Harunobu and his
successor Koriusai (the face of the Japanese woman is the face of
Harunobu, Koriusai, Shunsho and his school). M. de Goncourt says:
“The Japanese woman is lithe, little, and rounded. Out of this woman
Utamaro created the slender, svelte woman of his prints,—a woman who
has the delicate outlines of an early Watteau sketch. Before Utamaro,
Kiyonaga had drawn women, larger than nature, but fleshy and thick.
The face of the ordinary Japanese woman is short and squat, and except
for the inexpressible vivacity and sweetness of the black eyes it is
the face which Harunobu, Koriusai and Shunsho represented. Out of
this face Utamaro created a long oval. He slid into the traditional
treatment of the features a mutinous grace, a naïve astonishment, a
spiritual comprehension; and he was the first artist who attempted,
while preserving the consecrated traditional lines, to blend with them
a human expression, so that his best prints become real portraits.
Studying them, we no longer see only the universal, but the individual
face, and, unlike the other Japanese artists, he idealizes his
countrywoman through the mimicry of her gracious humanity.”
The women of Kiyonaga have a more than human dignity and grace, the
classic folds of his drapery recalling figures of the Renaissance. The
Japanese artist always has an underlying motive in the disposition of
his drapery. The most recognizable perhaps are those called “Guantai,”
signifying rude, with angular outlines, and “Rintai,” delicate, supple
and wavy, like the undulations of a river.
In the “Guantai” motive we see the angles of the rocks, even in the
most delicate folds of drapery. In “Rintai” no angle is visible. Here
wavelike ripples descend, flowing around the feet of the wearer. In
these swirls of drapery are realized the Buddhist conceptions of Life
in everything,—the lines are moving, sentient, and all but the leading
folds that determine the lines of the figure are suppressed. The
Japanese painter knows that the true master selects, does not draw all
he sees, but concentrates his efforts towards reproducing the lines of
movement, and in figures, the lines of the limbs and flowing drapery.
In their designs for dresses the artists of Ukiyo-ye emphasized
the theorem that art is the love of certain balanced relations and
proportions, for they planned dresses in which every separate part is
welded into one harmonious whole. They solved theories in colour, and
delighted in selecting as trials for their skill the most unmanageable
patterns, such as plaids and checks. They extolled “Notan” or the
decorative use of values.
[Illustration: Two Ladies. By Yeishi, who gave to his faces a mystic,
even religious expression, like the women of the Middle Ages.]
In the best prints the decoration of the dress fits in with the
scheme of the picture. M. de Goncourt says: “If the figures are
represented out of doors, flowers seem to be shed upon the dresses, as
if the wearer passed beneath blossoming trees. If the artist paints
butterflies on a costume, they harmonize with the background. If
peonies are used he alternates their whiteness with a purple tint.
And how admirable is their use of relief! Upon a blue or mauve gown,
how charming is the white relief of an embossed cherry petal, and
so marvellously executed is this goffering, that many of the oldest
impressions retain the impression as perfectly as if only printed
yesterday.” Utamaro at first equalled Kiyonaga in the majesty of his
figures, later he lost beauty and strength in exaggeration. Yeishi
shows a striking resemblance to Utamaro, and he, too, followed after
Kiyonaga: his studies of women are noted for their refined elegance.
Yeisen compares with Utamaro in the grace with which he portrays women,
and Yeizan’s lines are stronger, but show a marked similarity. Hartmann
says: “The linear beauties of the representations of Yeizan, Yeishi,
Yeisen, impress one like a Nautch, like some languid oriental dance in
which the bodies undulate with an almost imperceptible vibration. The
Japanese see in a woman, a glorification of all beautiful things—they
even study the natural grace of the willow, plum and cherry trees, to
find the correct expression of her movements.”
Toyokuni was the master of mimetic art. In his actor faces he runs the
gamut of emotion,—jealousy, passion, fiendish fury and concentrated
cunning, rush at us from his prints. Toyokuni, the Marionette maker,
forced life into the forms of his puppets, and later the same power is
shown in his designs for the block. Like many of the Ukiyo-ye artists,
he employs caricature, but his figures are living, sentient.
M. de Goncourt says: “In comparing two books by Utamaro, and Toyokuni,
illustrating the occupations of the women of the Yoshiwara Toyokuni,
often the equal of Utamaro in his triptychs is beaten by his rival.
His women have not the elegance, the willowy grace, the figures of
Utamaro possess, nor their resplendent personality. His pictures lack
the spirit, the life, the ‘trick’ of voluptuousness of the women of
the ‘Flower Quarter.’ Then the comic note which Toyokuni sought for in
representing these scenes, adds triviality to his work. In short, to
judge between the rival painters, one has only to place side by side
a woman painted by Utamaro and one by Toyokuni. The first is a little
marvel, the second only a commonplace print.” Kunisada followed in the
footsteps of his master Toyokuni, adding charming backgrounds, which
he borrowed from Hiroshige; in fact, the Hiroshige are said to have
supplied many backgrounds to the prints of Kunisada and Kuniyoshi.
Hokusai used all methods, acknowledged no school. His lines flowing
out of the prescribed limits hint at vast stretches of country. Swirls
of waves foam up in the impressions, supplying an alphabet of motion.
In Mang-wa is blent sweetness and power, structure and the fundamental
vital motive, underlying all art. When working for the engraver he was
concise, rapid and impulsive, but when contemplating nature he sketched
in freedom,—his execution became fairylike.
[Illustration: An Actor in the Miyako Dance. By Shunko, pupil of
Shunsho, nicknamed Ko-tsubo, or “The Little Jar,” from the seal used
by his master.]
The landscape of Hiroshige, though confined to the narrow range of the
wood-cut, have all the qualities of Impressionism, the details are
subordinated, only the salient points of the scene being represented,
but the atmosphere supplies what is lacking, and this incommunicable,
subtle gift, the birthright of the artists, enabled them to conjure
living pictures from the hard medium of the wooden block.
The following suggestive comparisons between the masters of Ukiyo-ye,
kindly volunteered by Mr. Morgan Shepard, are full of value to the
student, as the individual opinion of a refined amateur and art critic.
Of Harunobu he says: “Though from the point of proportion his figures
seem to lack technic, the naïve artlessness of his lines perfectly
satisfies us. In this purpose of simplicity they almost suggest the
qualities of the fresco work by the early Tuscan masters, when the
spirit was striving for expression and working out individuality along
its own spiritual lines. The vigour of his stroke impresses one as
being untraditional.