THE THIRD PERIOD: KIYONAGA AND HIS FOLLOWERS
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 of Nature;
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 that
reports 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 visions with 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.
[Illustration: KIYONAGA: THE COURTESAN HANA-ŌJI WITH ATTENDANTS.
One of a Series "Designs of Spring Greenery." Size 15 × 10. Signed
_Kiyonaga ga_.
_Plate 25._]
The Yoshiwara or licensed quarter of Yedo was established in 1614 as
part of the general Tokugawa regime of orderliness and control: even by
that date the authorities had tired of the cruel and ugly chaos that
prevails in these matters to-day in our cities. The name of the quarter
was derived from the fact that it was located in the midst of an ancient
"yoshiwara" or rush-moor. In 1657, after a fire that demolished all the
buildings, the quarter was moved to a site half a mile north of the
great Asakusa temple in the north-east outskirts of the city, where it
remains to this day. Within this moated and walled enclosure about a
quarter of a mile square, to which access was obtained through one great
gate, stood orderly rows of large houses crowded close together. The
front of each house was latticed; behind the bars appeared the
splendidly clad inmates. These were of many grades and ranks; it is, as
a rule, the highest class only that are represented in the prints.
The high-class Oiran was a notable personage. Her state was like that of
a princess. Attendant upon her were customarily two small girls, called
Kamuro, who acted as lady's-maids; and one or two older girls, called
Shinzo, whose duties were those of a kind of maid-of-honour. Her attire,
of a gorgeousness wholly different from the costume of the ordinary
woman, bedecks her in many of the prints with truly royal splendour.
Poets sang of her; artists painted her; the common people talked of her
with the same frank and admiring interest that our populace bestows upon
theatrical favourites. Moralless though her life was, it was not in any
external sense degraded; she stood in the position in which have stood
all the great courtesans of history.
The names of the more famous among the Oiran have come down to us
wrapped in glowing tradition. Hana-ōgi of the House of Ōgi-ya, the most
beautiful and deeply loved courtesan of her time, moves immortal through
the designs of Kiyonaga, Shuncho, Yeishi, Utamaro, and their
contemporaries. She was a pupil of the poet Tōkō Genrin, and ranked as a
distinguished artist in both Chinese and Japanese verse. At one time,
obeying the dictates of a profound attachment, she dared all perils and
fled from the Yoshiwara with her lover. These facts, together with the
filial piety for which she was renowned, doubtless augmented her
romantic fame. Of her beauty and lordly carriage the prints leave us no
doubt. Again and again we find lavished upon her well-beloved figure all
the resources of the greatest artists. In Plate 25 she is the leading
figure, with her attendants grouped around her; in Plate 32 she stands
beside a latticed window opening on to the Sumida River, alone and
meditative.
It is necessary for any one who would understand the art of the period
to put aside preconceived notions and realize that these
courtesan-portraits are not representations of low gutter creatures, but
that they portray women of the highest degree of intellectual refinement
who were in real life much like the cultivated _hetairæ_ of ancient
Athens, the companions, friends, and beloveds of Pericles and Plato.
[Illustration: KIYONAGA: LADY WITH TWO ATTENDANTS.
One of a Series "Brocades of the East." Size 15 × 10. Signed _Kiyonaga
ga_. Gookin Collection.
_Plate 26._]
And as one examines the few records which Japanese writers have given to
the Western world, the conviction grows ever stronger that at this time,
when the free and romantic love of men and women was a thing alien to
the businesslike Japanese marriage system, the one region where love as
we understand it might flourish--the one region where might arise those
desperate attachments of heart for heart which we regard as heroic--was
the isolated enclosure of the Yoshiwara. There no shrewd parents
arranged the unwilling, blind match; there the hampered spirits of that
day found freedom, however perilous; and there alone men and women,
though surrounded by an atmosphere of sordid corruption, faced death as
did the Tristram and Iseult of our legends, in the service of a passion
more precious than life itself.... For the Oiran could turn lover.
KIYONAGA.
_Festival Scene._
What gods are these, reborn from gracious days
To fill our gardens with diviner mould
Than therein dwelling? What bright race of old
Revisits here one hour our mortal ways?
Serene, dispassionate, with lordly gaze
They move through this clear afternoon of gold,
Equal to life and all its deeps may hold,
Calm, spacious masters of the glimmering maze.
What gods are these? or godlike men? whom earth
Suffices, in a wisdom just and high
That not repines the boundaries of its birth
But fills its destined measure utterly--
Finding in mortal sweetness perfect worth,
Not yet grown homesick for the wastes of sky.
The reader will perhaps have noted how many artists of the preceding
period withdrew toward the close of their careers from the field to
which a new conqueror had come. This universal victor was Kiyonaga. No
other Ukioye artist ever so dominated his period. All earlier
print-designers were gradually driven into retirement by his colossal
success, and the majority of his contemporaries adopted his style. In
him all previously developed resources met; after him began that long
decline which led through intermediate stages of such hauntingly lovely
decadence to the final death of the art. The Torii School now awoke from
its quiescence, and for the second and final time assumed the dominance
it had in the days of Kiyonobu.
[Illustration: KIYONAGA.]
Little is known of Kiyonaga's life. Born in 1742, he worked as a young
man for a bookseller in Yedo. He studied painting under Kiyomitsu,
became the fourth head of the Torii School, produced the most important
portion of his work between 1777 and 1790, and not long after 1790
retired from any large amount of further print-designing. His death
occurred in 1815.
Though Kiyonaga was a pupil of Kiyomitsu, little of that artist's
influence is visible in his work. It is true that his earliest sheets,
actors in _hoso-ye_ form, are precisely like Kiyomitsu's; but he appears
to have abandoned this style very quickly, and most of his early
actor-prints resemble Shunsho's more than his master's. In certain of
his early works Harunobu's influence is evident; and the long-dead
Moronobu's manner of line-work sometimes appears. From Masanobu he
perhaps inherited the grand carriage of his women. Later, Shigemasa's
style influenced him, and Koriusai had a marked effect upon his
development. He absorbed inspiration from all these artists, gathering
to himself the best in the heritage of the past, and then struck out
with a boldness that is never bizarre, an originality that is never
affected, into his own natural and masterful manner.
[Illustration: KIYONAGA: THE COURTESAN SHIZUKA WITH ATTENDANTS IN THE
PEONY GARDEN AT ASAKUSA.
Left-hand sheet of a triptych. Size 15 × 10. Signed _Kiyonaga ga_.
_Plate 27._]
By about 1777 he had developed his distinctive style. Its most obvious
characteristic lies in the new quality of the figures he depicts. His
types perhaps grew out of those of Koriusai; but he combined with
Koriusai's richness a monumental quality to find the equal of which we
must go back to the Primitives. It is his union of the pre-Harunobu
dignity with the Harunobu grace and colour, in a superb and easy
synthesis of his own--a truly grand style--that has made him by common
consent the foremost Ukioye artist.
The type of figure which Kiyonaga created is expressive of a more stable
equilibrium of spiritual forces than any seen before. It embodies a
normality of attitude characteristic of the great culminating periods of
art. The primitive artist expresses himself in figures whose mannerisms
and constraint suggest the limitations of his technique; the decadent
artist, as we shall see later, pours his visions into figures of a
slender langour and relaxation that parallel his own weariness and
satiety; but the artist of the prime draws large-limbed, wholesome,
magnificently normal figures as the symbols of his magnificently normal
mind.
These figures of Kiyonaga's mature period are unforgettable creations.
Tall and strong, moving with the unconscious and stately grace of superb
animals, they carry the suggestion of a spiritual structure even more
glorious than the structure of their bodies; and one looks upon them
with a sentiment not unlike awe, as upon princesses of some land of the
gods. Kiyonaga's perfect drawing, operating through a naturalistic yet
highly imaginative convention, ennobles the forms he portrays as did the
convention of the Greek sculptors; and he comes nearer to the Greek
sentiment toward the nude than does any other Japanese artist except
Toyonobu. His nudes themselves are not what I now refer to, but rather
to that sense of bodily presence, that consciousness of the limbs
beneath the draperies, which, as in Plate 28, one finds recurrently in
his pictures. He keeps his draperies simple, denying himself the
gorgeous brocades of birds and flowers which Koriusai used so richly.
The garments he draws are beautiful; but he does not lose in their
ornamentation the lines of the splendidly proportioned body beneath;
muscles contract and limbs move under the fine folds; and our sense of
the textiles is dominated by our sense of the organism within.
The movements, gestures, and attitudes of these figures are tranquil and
strong; their forms are never melting or seductive, but always touched
with a fine rigour. In one notable diptych, where a group of women and a
seated man are gathered on the terrace of a tea-house overlooking the
seashore, vigour of spiritual sanity and refinement of pictorial
composition touch the highest point reached in the whole course of the
art. The harmonies of this particular design, "The Terrace by the Sea,"
embody the best and most characteristic powers of Kiyonaga.
[Illustration: KIYONAGA: TWO WOMEN AND A TEA-HOUSE WAITRESS BESIDE THE
SUMIDA RIVER.
One sheet of a triptych. Size 15 × 10. Signed _Kiyonaga ga_. Gookin
Collection.
_Plate 28._]
We have never seen in bodily presence such people as Kiyonaga's. Yet, as
Turner is reported to have said of his sunset, "don't you wish you had?"
These figures are serene, supernatural, Olympian; fictional, just as
Harunobu's are but differing from his in that they interpret possible
development and portray the human ideal, and do not lie apart from
reality in a region of private vision.
Kiyonaga saw, as the greatest artists of mature epochs have always seen,
that the fictions of personal fancy are not so interesting or so
beautiful as imaginative renderings of reality. In so far as he
respected reality he was a realist. Yet he was never the dupe of that
realism which attempts to report photographically. In his renderings
fact took a harmonious place alongside of those idealizations which were
personal to him. Kiyonaga saw Nature with clear eyes, and on the solid
foundation of observed fact he reared the noble structure of his vision
of life--a vision in which the world is peopled by a race such as the
human race ought to be.
This was Kiyonaga's primary contribution to Ukioye art. Consequent upon
it he introduced certain important innovations.
We have seen how Harunobu, dreaming in colour and pushing to the
farthest limits the refinements of technique in colour-printing,
produced miniature jewelled improvisations that have never been
equalled. Harunobu customarily elaborated every portion of his sheet
with these inlayings of beautiful tones, enriching his figures with
gauffrage and tinting his backgrounds of sky and water. He resembled a
worker in enamels who must cover every inch of his surface with luminous
hues.
But just as Harunobu toward the end of his life felt these effects to be
only partially adequate, and turned to the larger world of
pillar-prints--so from the beginning Kiyonaga found this jewelled
delicacy to be incompatible with the scope that was the need of his
specific genius. He discarded all those lovely tricks of the engraver
and the printer which had been almost an end in themselves to Harunobu.
He abstained from giving to his backgrounds Harunobu's exquisite neutral
tones, feeling that they could only suffer by the addition of tint. He
was no colour-dreamer, but a great harmonist of lines and spaces; and
the lofty skies and wide horizons that create distance behind his
figures attest his wisdom.
Similarly he was unable to content himself with the flawless grace of
line that Harunobu and Buncho had mastered. Either from the powerful and
massive brush-strokes of Moronobu or from the even more expressive
brushwork of Shigemasa, he derived a style that is one of his chief
glories. No use of line was ever more virile than his. The brush seems
to vibrate in his hand; the strokes are instinct with life along every
fraction of their length; the line narrows, widens, swirls, breaks, and
flows in perfect response to the will of the mind behind it. So
individual is Kiyonaga's touch that it would be possible for an expert
to attribute to him a print of which only one square inch survived.
[Illustration: KIYONAGA: YOSHITSUNE SERENADING THE LADY JORURIHIME.
A triptych. Each sheet size 15 × 10. Signed _Kiyonaga ga_. Spaulding
Collection.
_Plate 29._]
It is characteristic of Kiyonaga's style that he did not confine himself
to the small square sheets used by Harunobu and the small oblong
_hoso-ye_ used by Shunsho. His most important work is in the form of the
large full-size sheets which he adopted from Koriusai. In these he rose
to a height unparalleled in Ukioye; and M. Koechlin is quite right in
esteeming Kiyonaga's sense of elaborate composition, here so
impressively displayed, as his chief grandeur.
In the series of large sheets without backgrounds, "Designs of Spring
Greenery," one of which is reproduced in Plate 25--Kiyonaga produced
work not very different from that of his collaborator Koriusai. Only in
certain sheets is there a harmonious grasp of the full possibilities of
pictorial composition. But proceeding to other series, the gap widens.
In the series "Present Day Beauties of the Yoshiwara," he advanced to
his own unique field. Possibly he touched the supreme height in the
great group "Brocades of the Customs of the East," which includes such
well-known prints as the two saltwater carriers on the seashore, the
three singers at the bath, the two ladies conversing with a
flower-vendor, and the print reproduced in Plate 26.
From these prints Kiyonaga proceeded to still further combinations,
devising compositions in which two, three, or even five sheets unite
into one wide design. For the triptych we have Kiyonaga to thank. The
triptych was not, it is true, literally Kiyonaga's invention; many
artists in the First and Second Periods had produced _hoso-ye_ sheets in
sets of three that could be joined together to form one picture. In
fact, each set of three was originally one sheet printed from one set of
blocks; and it was convenience and economy rather than the idea of
producing any real three-piece composition that led to the production of
these sets. The prints were almost always conceived as separate
pictures; they seldom gain by juxtaposition, and frequently suffer by
it.
Far other was the impulse that led Kiyonaga to his diptych and triptych
compositions. The great triptych of the "Disembarkment," the diptych of
the "Night Expedition," the "Serenade" triptych reproduced in Plate 29,
and the whole series of diptychs called "Twelve Months of the South," to
which belongs the marvellous "Terrace by the Sea," are all dominated by
an indigenous rhythm of line and colour. These designs have not
Shunsho's startling force, nor Harunobu's minutely detailed grace, nor
Koriusai's richness; all these elements Kiyonaga sacrifices for a
broader sweep and a more unified pictorial quality. His designs
co-ordinate the elements of line, colour, figures, and landscape into
total impressions of such large harmony as we have not seen before and
shall hardly see again. To over-estimate the genius that produced the
grouping of his best work is impossible; to realize it fully requires
careful analysis, so unobtrusive and inevitable are its effects.
[Illustration: KIYONAGA: GEISHA WITH SERVANT CARRYING LUTE-BOX.
Size 27 × 4½. Signed _Kiyonaga ga_.
KIYONAGA: WOMAN PAINTING HER EYEBROWS.
Size 27 × 6. Signed _Kiyonaga ga_.
_Plate 30._]
Kiyonaga's greatest works are these triptychs and diptychs in which
he depicts the holiday life of his Olympian figures. Even single sheets
from them are treasures; for though they combine into still greater
compositions, each one, as we may see in Plate 27, or in any one of the
sheets of Plate 29, is a perfect unit that can stand alone. His
pillar-prints, of which two appear in Plate 30, are ranked among the
foremost works in this form.
Eventually Kiyonaga's finest manner passed. Though the vigour of his
brush-strokes remained, his figures began to take on an exaggerated
length and slimness characteristic of the coming decadence. Therefore
his retirement from print-designing, a little after 1790, was not, as in
the case of Harunobu's untimely death, an irreparable loss. His greatest
work was finished. Why he retired is not known; the various speculations
on the subject are not very enlightening.
Though the finest Kiyonaga prints rarely come into the market nowadays,
the less important examples of his work are by no means impossible to
obtain. His smaller prints, and his pillar-prints in particular, are
among the most attractive acquisitions remaining for the collector. The
large single sheets, if fine impressions and in fine condition, are
among the foremost of the collector's treasures. The great triptychs are
almost unprocurable, except in poor condition.
The collector must patiently await his opportunity. There is probably
not a single Kiyonaga obtainable anywhere to-day that is of the quality
of that unique group of marvellously printed masterpieces which once
belonged to Fenollosa, and which is now one of the glories of the
Spaulding Collection in Boston. Similarly, the Mansfield Collection in
New York and the Buckingham Collection in Chicago contain Kiyonagas
which are the result of long years of search and which could not be
duplicated in all the markets of the world combined.
PUPILS OF KIYONAGA.
TORII KIYOMASA was the son of Kiyonaga. His work, produced between 1810
and 1825, is without special distinction.
Among the minor pupils may be named Kiyotsugi, Kiyohisa, Kiyokatsu,
Kiyotei, Kiyotoki, Kiyoyuki, Kiyohide II, Kiyotsune II.
Every artist of the day was influenced by Kiyonaga; among those
difficult to classify otherwise may be named the following men:--
SANCHŌ, who worked in the neighbourhood of 1780, produced prints
somewhat in the manner of Shuncho. Delicacy rather than strength
distinguished him in the few examples of his work I have seen.
HARUMITSU is an artist whose work is known to me only by one
pillar-print in my collection. Fenollosa, who once owned the print,
noted on the margin of it: "A rare man. Name may be also read Shunkō,
but not the same as the pupil of Shunsho. A follower of Kiyonaga." And
this is all the information I have been able to obtain about him. It is
possible that he is the same as Shunko II.
[Illustration: SHUNCHO: GROUP AT A TEMPLE GATE.
A diptych. Each sheet size 15 × 10. Signed _Shuncho ga_. Mansfield
Collection.
_Plate 31._]
SHUNCHO.
Your lovely ladies shall not fade
Though Yedo's moated walls be laid
Level with dust, and night-owls brood
Over the city's solitude.
Far be the coming of that day!
Yet that it comes not, who shall say?
Who knows how long the halls shall stand
Of your once-golden wonderland?
Perhaps shall Nikko crumble down,
Its carvings worn, its glow turned brown
Through many winters. On that hill
Where great Ieyasu's brazen will
In brazen tomb now takes its rest,
Perhaps the eagle's young shall nest.
Kyoto's gardens cannot last.
At Kamakura, where the vast
Form of the Buddha fronts the sea,
A waste of waves may someday be....
Ah, stale and flat the warning bell
Whose melancholy accents tell
Impermanence to hearts that guess
Time's undiscovered loveliness.
A fairer Yedo shall arise;
A richer Nikko praise the skies;
Ieyasus mightier than of old
Shall cast the world in wiser mould;
Fresh gardens shall be spread; new faith
Shall spring when Buddha is a wraith--
And more puissant hands than yours
Shall paint anew life's ancient lures.
Yet when he comes who shall surpass
Your beauty that so matchless was,
A joy shall light him through your eyes,
A flame shall from your embers rise,
Your gentle art shall make him wise
In mastery of melodies.
And though your wreath in dust be laid,
Your lovely ladies shall not fade!
Nothing is known of the life or personality of Katsukawa Shuncho. His
name and certain peculiarities of his drawing indicate unmistakably
that he began his career as a pupil of Shunsho; but he soon fell under
the influence of Kiyonaga and became that artist's most notable
follower. His main work lies between the years 1775 and 1800; it is
thought that he stopped designing prints before the latter year, though
he is said to have lived until after 1821. His designs, one of which
appears in Plate 31, comprise chiefly figures of women, drawn with
extraordinary grace of line and softness of colouring.
[Illustration: SHUNCHO.]
Except in a few early actor-prints, Shuncho had only one manner--that
which we have come to call the middle Kiyonaga style. It was early in
his career that he threw off the harsh dominance of Shunsho. M. Raymond
Koechlin points out that had he remained under that influence he would
without doubt have been lost in the banal horde of designers of
actor-prints who spiritlessly followed that great artist. For there was
nothing in common between the rugged masterful genius of Shunsho and the
luminous grace of his pupil. Kiyonaga's style, however, Shuncho could
adopt and utilize to express his own peculiar and mild sense of beauty,
with a perfection that makes him stand out unique among Kiyonaga's
disciples. Other pupils of Kiyonaga followed the master for a longer or
shorter while; but all the others sooner or later developed styles of
their own or copied the styles of other leaders--often eccentric and
decadent leaders, far inferior to him whom they had abandoned. But
Shuncho, having adopted the Kiyonaga manner at its noblest, when the
proportions in the drawing of the figure were most natural and
dignified, never departed from it except to make it slightly less
naturalistic, in accordance with what he had learned from his first
master Shunsho. That this was so manifests Shuncho's purity of feeling,
and also reveals his strange lack of desire to experiment in new
manners. No artist so great as Shuncho has ever been so little endowed
with initiative and invention. I fancy that he marks the point in the
development of the Ukioye School where, after the progressive force of
Kiyonaga had spent itself, the art stands still for a brief moment of
perfect balance before it begins to take its course down the long slope
of the decline.
[Illustration: SHUNCHO: TWO LADIES UNDER UMBRELLA.
Size 17 × 4½. Signed _Shuncho ga_.
SHUNCHO: THE COURTESAN HANA-ŌJI--THE SUMIDA RIVER SEEN
THROUGH THE WINDOW.
Size 27 × 5. Signed _Shuncho ga_.
_Plate 32._]
In many respects like Kiyonaga, Shuncho can hardly be regarded as second
even to his master, except in originality. He lacked Kiyonaga's great
creative imagination--an imagination which brought into being the
Olympian style. But his gifts enabled him to assimilate this style
perfectly and turn it to his own slightly different uses. His sense of
composition is rather undistinguished when compared with Kiyonaga's; but
the delicacy of his drawing, the restrained harmonies of his colour, and
the clean vitality of his line have a beauty that we could ill afford to
sacrifice even for Kiyonaga's strength. Kiyonaga brings down the gods in
all their noble dignity to walk the earth in calm magnificence; but
Shuncho leads us into a secret heaven where the loveliest and most
flower-like of the gods have remained behind. His is a softer beauty,
touched with remote half-lights, vibrant with faint wistfulness; his
superb women turn in mid-joy as though far and grave music had suddenly
drifted to their hearing; their perfection passes over into the region
where beauty becomes sadness. No women in the whole range of Japanese
art so haunt one's memory as do his; no beauty seems at the same time so
flawless and so charged with the burden of transitoriness. One cannot
but feel that where Kiyonaga's healthy vision saw only the happiness and
brilliance and splendour of the forms that swept by him in the mortal
procession, Shuncho saw also the ghostly fleetness of their passing and
the melancholy of their radiance sunset-bound; and around his figures
this sense throws a quiet tender light, a suggestion of brooding and
caressing sweetness.
[Illustration: SHUNCHO: TWO LADIES IN A BOAT ON THE SUMIDA RIVER.
Size 26 × 4½. Unsigned.
YEISHO: TWO COURTESANS AFTER THE BATH.
Size 25 × 5. Signed _Yeisho ga_.
_Plate 33._]
In his finest prints the softly luminous colour and the gently sweeping
lines of his ladies move sometimes through the palely glowing rooms of
palaces, but more often through sunlit fields and gardens and blossoming
groves--regions of delight and cloudless skies, scenes of eternal
happiness. His colour-schemes in these natural settings are artfully
contrived to produce, through the limited agency of flat tints, an
impression of crystal-clear atmosphere around and behind the figures. In
both his triptychs and his pillar-prints there often stretches away this
delicate world of hills or seashore or river-bank that plays no small
part in the incantation of beauty. His pillar-prints, of which three
are reproduced in Plates 32 and 33, are especially fine; I sometimes
think that here he surpasses Kiyonaga.
And yet there is about all his work a strange impersonality, an absence
of any note that brings to our notice Shuncho himself, the observer and
recorder. He is detached even from his own most perfect work. Compare
him with Harunobu or Sharaku or Utamaro, and observe how invisible he
is--how his designs have a transparency that absolutely conceals him.
In historical importance and in originality Shuncho is secondary to
Kiyonaga; in absolute beauty his work deserves a place beside that of
the master. As a colourist--his most distinguished rôle--he was perhaps
the greater of the two.
The collector may be interested to note that practically all Shuncho's
work is printed with the utmost sharpness and refinement; poor
impressions of his prints are almost unknown. In this particular he is
in striking contrast to many of his contemporaries; and one may perhaps
trace his care to the training of Shunsho, of whose work also I have
seldom seen a really poor impression. Shuncho's work is unfortunately
not common; finely preserved copies are scarcer than Kiyonaga's.
SHUNZAN.
Katsukawa Shunzan was a little-known artist who worked from about 1775
to about 1810. He was first, as his name would suggest, a pupil of
Shunsho; in his rare early prints in _hoso-ye_ form he produced actors
in the manner of that school with considerable charm of line, but
without great vigour. Even in these early pieces Shunzan's leaning
towards sweetness and suavity suggests that he was not at home in the
Shunsho manner; and it is not strange to find that he later turned to
Kiyonaga, under whose powerful influence he produced his best-known
work--beautiful ladies in robes of splendour. He generally copied the
Kiyonaga type of figure closely, but a little stiffly; and he was not
often master of those harmonies of arrangement and grouping which
distinguished his teacher. But occasionally his colour is very rich and
glowing.
[Illustration: SHUNZAN.]
Either he produced little or else time has been even less than normally
kind to his work, for few prints by him survive.
SHUNMAN.
Kubo Shunman was one of those singular artists who fascinate us almost
as much by mystery as by beauty. Living from 1757 to 1820, or, as some
authorities say, to 1829, he was at one time a pupil of Shigemasa; but
he later turned to Kiyonaga as his final and most important teacher.
From Kiyonaga he learned the rudiments of his style; yet on the whole
his work resembles Kiyonaga very little. An individual touch dominates
all his compositions. He may be called the symphonist of greys; for a
large part of his most notable production is done in modulated shades of
this colour, heightened and made luminous here and there by carefully
calculated touches of green, yellow, red, or violet. His figures are
drawn in a manner less solid than Kiyonaga's; as in Plate 45, the lines
seem tormented and strained into arabesques of peculiar and restless
beauty. The harmony of his colour is kept by this sharp intensity of
line-work from sinking into mere sweetness and flatness.
[Illustration: KUBO SHUNMAN.]
These figures of Shunman, sketched with the curious uneasiness of line
of which I speak, stand before backgrounds of equal strangeness. The
landscapes seem instinct with an obscure life; the Talking Oak of Dodona
was never more haunted than are they. His great six-sheet composition,
"The Six Tamagawa," is positively disturbing in the feeling of
supernatural forces that it awakens. As Fenollosa says: "Everything he
does has a strange touch. The Kiyonaga face becomes distorted with a
sort of divine frenzy; trees grope about with their branch-tips like
sentient beings; flowers seem to exhale unknown perfumes, and the waters
of his streams writhe and glide with a sort of reptilian fascination."
Or, as Mr. Arthur Morrison puts it: "There is a touch of fantasy in most
of his published designs, as well as in some of his original
pictures--an atmosphere as of some strange country where the trees, the
rocks, the flowers, and the streams are alive with human senses and
mysterious communion."
For reasons not wholly clear, the work of Shunman is received by the
Japanese connoisseurs with more favour than that of most Ukioye artists.
Some obscure quality of restraint and imagination relates him to the
older classical schools in a way that makes him acceptable to their
aristocratic exclusiveness of taste.
Shunman's best prints are so rare as to be beyond the dreams of the
ordinary collector. His complete "Tamagawa" is a work for which all the
great collectors in the world compete. His smaller prints and
book-illustrations are, however, procurable; and his surimono are
excellent and fairly numerous. His pillar-prints, of which only three or
four designs are known to me, are remarkably fine.
KITAO MASANOBU.
_Two Women._
What floors have ye trod? What sky-paven places have opened
their halls to your eyes?
What light was yours, through summerward spaces watching the
swallow that flies?
What holy silence has touched your faces--what hush of paradise?
I think that he died of a longing unspoken who dreamed you
to walk in our ways.
The wheel at the cistern, the pitcher is broken: ye wot not that
dust decays--
Ye, torn from the heart of the dreamer as token to dreamers of
other days.
Kitao Masanobu was another of the pupils of Shigemasa who marched
eventually beneath the banner of Kiyonaga, though he retained to the
last much of his first master's manner. Born in 1761, he lived until
1816. His occupations besides painting were various: he kept a
tobacco-shop, and was best known in his own day under the literary name
of Kyōden, for his highly popular novels and comic poems. He produced
very few prints, but those few are of distinguished quality, all of them
probably the product of his early years, before he reached the age of
thirty. At least one of these, reproduced in Plate 31, is an
unsurpassable triumph. His resemblance to his first master is so marked
that it is not always possible at first glance to distinguish his prints
from those of Shigemasa. In fact there is a certain unsigned
pillar-print, representing the two lovers Komurasaki and Gompachi, which
is still of doubtful authorship, some authorities attributing it to
Shigemasa, while others assign it to Masanobu.
[Illustration: MASANOBU (KITAO).]
Possibly Kitao Masanobu is most widely known for his elaborate
illustrated book, "Celebrated Women of the Tea Houses and their
Handwritings." This volume was published about 1780; I have already
referred to it in dealing with the great illustrated book of Shunsho and
Shigemasa. It consists of seven large double-page illustrations in many
colours, and is a highly praised work, sheets of which are often
mounted as separate prints. It appears to me, however, to have been
overrated; and my impression is that in these designs elaborateness has
smothered composition and richness has obliterated beauty.
Kitao Masanobu's single-sheet prints are lamentably few, as are also his
pillar-prints; but from those that remain to us it is possible to rank
Masanobu as an artist second to only the very greatest. Spirituality is
a clumsy word to use in describing work so definitely embodied as this;
yet none other conveys the sense of his peculiar and grave harmony. The
mature beauty of his work carries us back to the perfection of
Shigemasa.
The collector will search long before he finds an important print by
this artist to add to his collection.
MASAYOSHI.
Kitao Masayoshi, who frequently signed himself Keisai or Shosin, was a
curious and original designer, who lived from 1761 to 1824. Though a
pupil of Shigemasa, he appears to have drawn a large part of his
inspiration from a source outside the Ukioye movement--the Kano School
of painting, in which the classical traditions still flourished. In his
main period, contemporaneous with Kiyonaga, his work was little
influenced by the great master. His designs are marked chiefly by the
vividness of his observation of flowers, animals, and landscape, and by
his technical skill in recording them. His books of sketches are his
best-known works--drawings in a manner new to wood-engraving; he
seldom employs any key-block, but leaves the main body of his colour
in broad impressionistic sweeps of the brush without definite boundary.
He approached Nature somewhat as did Hokusai in later days, with a sharp
perception and infinite interest. His work lies aside from the main
current of Ukioye history--an interesting backwater that comes more
properly within the region of classical painting than within that of
prints.
[Illustration: KITAO MASANOBU: THE CUCKOO.
Size 15½ × 22. Signed _Masanobu ga_. Spaulding Collection.
_Plate 34._]
Single-sheet prints by Masayoshi are very rare. His book-sheets are
somewhat more frequently met with.
VI
THE FOURTH
PERIOD:
THE DECADENCE
FROM THE
RETIREMENT OF KIYONAGA
TO THE
DEATH OF UTAMARO
(1790-1806)