THE FIFTH PERIOD: THE DOWNFALL
FROM THE DEATH OF UTAMARO TO THE DEATH OF HIROSHIGE (1806-1858)
When Utamaro died, in 1806, the great days of the figure-print were
ended. There were to be no more Harunobus or Kiyonagas or Sharakus--only
a horde of little men whose work retained few traces of the earlier
greatness. And our serious interest in the art as a whole must end here.
Were it not for the superb renaissance of landscape which this period
includes, side by side with the decay of figure-designing, it would be
my choice to mark this date as the end of our history.
The causes of the degradation of prints in this period appear to have
been of several natures. For one, the accidents that regulate the birth
of geniuses operated unkindly, and few artists of first-rate talent came
to take the places of the dead masters. Further, the colour-print had
gone somewhat out of fashion among its original public, and the people
who now bought were chiefly of a lower and more ignorant class than the
purchasers of Kiyonaga's day. To the less exacting but eager demands of
this class the publishers catered with coarser designs, cruder colours,
and more careless printing. Now, in literal truth, the print-designer
was the artisan; and amid the vast flood of commonplace productions of
the time it is difficult to search out those few works that have a claim
to beauty.
It is probable that a general loss in refinement of taste marked the
epoch and was reflected in the prints. The uncouth flaring designs of
the textiles, the gross overladen coiffures, the excess of decoration
that lay like a blight over all the instruments of life at this time,
naturally had their influence upon the standards of the artist.
Furthermore, the movement toward realism here reached its climax.
Dominated by Hokusai's earlier work, the artists abandoned the old
traditional devotion to stylistic restraint and went madly in chase of a
distorted kind of literal truth that had no relation to beauty. Men who
were too impotent to create visions nobly and too dull to observe
reality keenly attempted to conceal their double weakness by a double
evasion--spoiling what claim their work had to idealistic imagination by
touches of crude realism, and ruining it as realism by the most
grotesque aberrations of fancy. In the sphere of erotic prints this was
characteristically and repellently manifest. Certain examples of this
type, produced in the first quarter of the nineteenth century, surpass
in grossness even the most studied of European specimens. In landscape
alone has the period something of the highest charm to offer us.
THE SCHOOL OF TOYOKUNI.
As we have seen, Toyokuni's career ended anything but brilliantly.
Unfortunately his numerous followers appear to have been influenced more
by his final work than by the production of his better days. I do not
regard it as profitable to wade, as some writers have done, through this
wearying period of degenerate production and tabulate every fact
obtainable about every insignificant artist with the same care that one
would bestow upon Kiyonaga. I shall therefore be content to note down
only the most salient features of this epoch of disintegration.
Following Toyokuni, at least four men used the name made famous by him.
The first of these, Toyokuni II, was that same Toyokuni Gosotei of whom
we shall treat under the heading of Landscape. His use of the name
Toyokuni appears to have been between the years 1825 and 1835.
Toyokuni III was better known as Kunisada I; for though he was born in
1786 and lived until 1865, he did not adopt the name of Toyokuni until
about 1844. He added to our confusion by the fact that he signed himself
"Toyokuni" or "Toyokuni II," never recognizing the claims of the real
Toyokuni II to the name. Most frequently Kunisada's Toyokuni signature
is enclosed in a long red cartouch, a device never used by Toyokuni I.
This very undistinguished artist was one of the most prolific producers
of the school. All that meaningless complexity of design, coarseness of
colour, and carelessness of printing which we associate with the final
ruin of the art of colour-prints finds full expression in him. Every
tourist returning from Japan brings back dozens of crudely coloured
prints by him or by the members of his school, under the misapprehension
that these are the famous and valuable Japanese prints of which he has
vaguely heard. The only figure work of Kunisada's that I am able to
recall with any pleasure is his really notable Memorial Portrait of
Hiroshige, a dignified and impressive print. The few landscapes he
produced are of much greater beauty than his figures, and one is
inclined to wish that he had done more in this field and less in the
other.
[Illustration: KUNISADA.]
TOYOKUNI IV was also known as Kunisada II and as Kunimasa II. Born 1833,
he died 1880. His prints, largely executed in cheap analine colours, set
one's teeth on edge with some of the most shrieking discords that I have
ever encountered. There exists an unfortunate collector who proudly
brought back from Japan one hundred and nineteen triptychs by this
artist.
TOYOKUNI V was also called Kunisada III and Kunimasa III. His work was
worthless.
KUNIMASA I (1772-1810) was an exceedingly able pupil of Toyokuni, who
was influenced by Sharaku. Some of his work is very fine; he stands out
as one of the few notable designers of this group.
KUNINAGA, who died in 1804, was a rare pupil of Toyokuni. His work is
pleasant, though it has no great distinction; but it is far more
attractive than the work of most of these men, for the reason that he
had the good luck to die before the period of general disintegration
began. The Spaulding Collection contains a fine diptych by him, in black
and several shades of yellow, in the early style of Toyokuni.
KUNIMITSU was also an early pupil of Toyokuni. His work is agreeable but
not notable.
From the vast number of minor followers of the Toyokuni tradition, I
select the following as the most common: KUNIYASU I, KUNIYASU II,
TOYOKIYO, TOYOHIRO II, KUNIFUSA, KUNIHIRO, KUNITANE, KUNIKATSU,
KUNIHISA, KUNITERA, KUNITERU, KUNIKANE I, KUNIKANE II, KUNITAKA,
KUNIMUNE, KUNIHIKO, KUNITOKI, KUNIYUKI, KUNITSUMA, KUNIKIYO, KUNIHANA,
KUNITOHISA, KUNIMICHI I, KUNIMICHI II, KUNIAO I, KUNIAO II, KUNITORA,
KUNITAKI, KUNITSUGI I, KUNITSUGI II, KUNITADA, KUNINOBU II, KUNIAKI,
KIYOKUNI, KUNIMARU I, KUNIMARU II, KUNICHIKA, CHIKASHIGE, YOSHITAKI,
YOSHITSURU, YOSHIUME, YOSHITSUNA, YOSHISATO, YOSHIFUJI, YOSHIKAGE,
YOSHIKUNI, YOSHICHIKA, YOSHIKAZU, YOSHIHARU, SHUNBENI, YOSHITOMI,
YOSHIFUSA, SUGAKUDO, SENCHO, TOMINOBU.
CHIKAMARO is said to be identical with KIOSAI, whose work sometimes
resembles Hokusai's. Born in 1831, he died very late in the century. He
was a vigorous designer--perhaps the best of all the later men. His
crow pictures are famous.
[Illustration: KIKUGAWA YEIZAN.]
KIKUGAWA YEIZAN, a prolific and undistinguished designer of the first
quarter of the century, was a late rival and imitator of Utamaro. He
eventually sank even to imitating Kunisada. The flowing draperies of
some of his prints of women are at first sight attractive to eyes not
accustomed to the finest works in this field; but the complete banality
of Yeizan's powers becomes manifest on more prolonged acquaintance, and
any trace of charm disappears.
FOLLOWERS OF THE TORII SCHOOL.
Here may be mentioned those artists in whom the once-great Torii School
came to its inglorious end.
KIYOMINE, the fifth head of the school, sometimes signed himself
Kiyomitsu; his work is easily distinguishable from that of the first
Kiyomitsu. He studied under Kiyonaga, and later adopted a style somewhat
like that of Toyokuni. His work is graceful, but not distinguished.
Prints by him are rather rare. He died in 1868.
KIYOFUSA, who died as late as 1892, was the sixth Torii. He also called
himself Kiyomitsu III and Kiyosada II. Other late members of this
school were: KIYOMOTO II, KIYOYASU, KIYOTADA II, KIYOTADA III, KIYOSADA
I.
THE OSAKA SCHOOL.
In the first half of the nineteenth century there grew into importance
in the city of Osaka a group of designers who constituted an exception
to the statement made earlier in this book--that the art of
colour-printing was exclusively a Yedo art. Hokusai is known to have
visited Osaka in 1818; and possibly it was his influence that encouraged
the movement. At any rate, a large number of the Osaka group were pupils
of Hokusai or followers of his manner.
The school thus entered into real activity at a date when the art was
far gone in its decline; and its designs produced no arresting effect.
Most of the work of these men is crude. Yet when we look at the products
of the second quarter of the century in Yedo, we may very possibly feel
that the Osaka output was at least no worse. It included chiefly
theatrical portraits, all done with a peculiar hardness of line and cold
brilliance of colour, and printed as a rule very skilfully. These by no
means approach the works of Shunsho, Shunyei, and Sharaku, after which
they were obviously patterned, nor even the works of Toyokuni; but the
hard treatment so characteristic of them gives a certain dignity of
effect which Kunisada's flowing and formless earthquakes of draperies
generally lack.
The school does not call for elaborate treatment; the following men may
be mentioned as among the best known: HOKUSHU, HASEGAWA SADANOBU,
SADAKAGE, KAGETOSHI, SADAFUSA, SADATORA, SADAMASA, SADAMASU, SADAHIRO,
SADAYOSHI, ASHIKUNI, ASHIYUKI, HIROSADA, SHUNSHI, HORAI SHUNSHO II,
HOKUMIO, HANZAN, YOSHIIKU, and RANKO. Others will be mentioned later as
pupils of Hokusai or as landscape-painters.
THE RENAISSANCE OF LANDSCAPE.
Like a beautiful island in the midst of a sea of wrecks, the landscape
prints of the first half of the nineteenth century stand apart from the
general debasement of print-designing. The great days of the
figure-print were over; but now, into an art filled with the second-rate
followers of Utamaro and Toyokuni, came the fresh and brilliant
landscape genius of Hokusai and Hiroshige. Their work did not share in
the general decline; it must be regarded as a new shoot sent up by the
roots of a tree whose main trunk had already fallen into irreparable
decay.
Landscape-prints were not a new thing; Utamaro and Toyohiro had already
produced fine work of this nature, and interesting examples are to be
found as we look backward through the work of Toyoharu, Shigemasa,
Kiyonobu, and Masanobu--back, in fact, almost to the beginning of the
art. But these earlier landscapes were, upon the whole, of subordinate
importance; beside the figure-prints of the earlier masters, they seem
crude and rudimentary. Previous to Hokusai and Hiroshige, they were
chiefly of topographical, not of æsthetic, intention and interest. In
the nineteenth century their importance became paramount.
"Japanese colour-prints devoted to landscape," writes Mr. Strange, "form
a class apart in the art of the world. There is nothing else like them;
neither in the highly idealistic and often lovely abstractions of the
aristocratic painters of Japan, nor in the more imitative and, it must
be said, more meaningless transcripts from nature, of European artists.
The colour-print, as executed by the best men of the Japanese popular
school, occupies an intermediate place; perhaps thus furnishing a reason
why we Westerners so easily appreciate it. Its imagery and sentiment are
elementary in the eyes of the native critics of Japanese high art. Its
attempts at realism are in his eyes mere evidence of vulgarity. On the
other hand these very qualities endear it to us. We can understand the
first, without the long training in symbolism which is the essential of
refinement to an educated man of the extreme East. And the other
characteristic forms, in our eyes, a leading recommendation. In short,
the landscapes of artists such as Hiroshige approach more nearly to our
own standards, and are thus more easily acceptable to us than anything
else in the pictorial arts of China and Japan; while they have all the
fascination of a strange technique, a bold and undaunted convention, and
a superb excellence of composition not too remote in principle from our
own."
HOKUSAI.
Because thou wast marvellous of eye, magic of fancy, lithe of hand,
Because thou didst play o'er many a gulf where common mortals
dizzy stand,
Because no thing in earth or sky escaped the pryings of thine art,
I call thee, who wast master of all, the master with the monkey's heart.
Where in the street the drunkards roll--where in the ring
the wrestlers sway,
Where rustics pound the harvest rice, or fishers sail, or abbots pray,
In rocky gorge, or lowland field, or winter heights of mountain air,
Wherever man or beast or bird or flower finds place--yea, everywhere
Thou standest, as I fancy, rapt in the live play of mass and line,
Curiously noting every poise; and in that ugly head of thine
Storing it with unsated fierce passion for life's minutest part,
Some day to use infallibly--O master with the monkey's heart!
Where Kanazawa's thundering shores behold the mounded waters rave,
And Fuji looms above the plain, and the plain slopes to meet the wave,
There didst thou from the trembling sands unleash thy soul in sudden flight
To soar above the whirling waste with awe and wonder and delight.
Thou sawest the giant tumult poured; each slope and chasm of cloven brine
Called thee; and from the scattered rout one vision did thy sight divine,
One heaven-affronting whelming wave in which all common waves have part--
A billow from the wrath of God--O monkey with a master's heart!
What mind shall span thee? Who shall praise or blame thy
world-embracing sight
Whose harvest was each rock and wraith, each form of loathing or of light?
Though we should puzzle all our days, we could not know thee as thou art,
Nor where the seer of vision ends, nor where begins the monkey's heart.
Until rather recently Hokusai was, for European spectators, as isolated
and commanding a figure in the domain of Japanese art as Fuji is in the
Japanese landscape. He was regarded as the one culminating and
all-inclusive genius among Japanese painters and print-designers. At
precisely the same time, he was esteemed by Japanese connoisseurs to be
a prolific but vulgar artisan, whose mere craftsman-dexterity could not
compensate for his lack of lofty feeling and poetic vision.
It is not necessary to quarrel with either of these views. Almost every
student of Hokusai passes through three stages. At first, he is
overwhelmed by Hokusai's technical skill and imaginative brilliance, and
regards him as unrivalled. Deeper experience brings him the conviction
that much of this magical dexterity is somewhat in the nature of a
juggler's antics in a vaudeville, and that his first burst of enthusiasm
was not wholly warranted. Then, finally, he comes to perceive that there
are qualities in Hokusai's work which, in spite of so much that is
vulgar, justly entitle this artist to his high fame.
[Illustration: HOKUSAI.]
One classes Hokusai as a landscape-artist; yet his work was by no means
confined to landscape. He pictured, as M. Théodore Duret wrote,
"everything to be seen by the eye or invented by the brain of a
Japanese." His "Mangwa," that vast twelve-volume collection of
drawings, includes sketches of a whole world of varied scenes and
objects and people. The bulk of his production was colossal--dozens of
designs a day throughout most of his eighty-nine years!
His figures are drawn with a swift and sure realism that is generally
tinged with humour and often with vulgarity. His vigorous power of
observing and recording faces and attitudes is almost unparalleled.
Fantasy, whimsical conceits, irony, grotesqueness animate them; always
they have superabundant life. The play of his brush is miraculous.
His landscapes are his greatest works. In the best of these he shakes
off his trifling mood, and, as in Plate 51, creates designs whose stark
brilliance and originality of composition is unsurpassed. And at least
once, in the noblest of his prints--the rare and monumental series of
"The Imagery of the Poets"--he achieves a high seriousness that will
always be impressive.
[Illustration: HOKUSAI: FUJI, SEEN ACROSS THE TAMA RIVER, PROVINCE OF
MUSASHI.
One of the Series "Thirty-six Views of Fuji." Size 10½ × 15. Signed
_Hokusai I-itsu, hitsu_.
_Plate 49._]
Hokusai was born in 1760, the son of a mirror-maker. He lived to the age
of eighty-nine years--a long life, crowded with privation that wins our
sympathy, and with incessant devotion to his art. When in his seventies,
he said: "Ever since the age of six years I have felt the impulse to
draw the forms of objects. Up to the age of fifty years I made a great
number of drawings; but I am dissatisfied with everything that I created
prior to my seventieth year. At the age of seventy-three I, for the
first time, began to grasp the true forms and nature of birds, fishes,
and plants. It follows that at the age of eighty I shall have made
still greater progress; at ninety I shall be able to create all objects;
at a hundred I shall certainly have attained to still higher,
unimaginable power; and when I finally reach my one hundred and tenth
year, every line, every dot will live with an intense life. I invite
those who are going to live as long as I to convince themselves whether
I shall keep my word. Written at the age of seventy-five years by me,
formerly Hokusai, now called the Old Man Mad with Painting." His dying
words were: "If the gods had given me only ten years more--only five
years more--I could have become a really great painter!"
Hokusai's education began as an apprentice to a wood-engraver, a
valuable experience for his later career. At the age of eighteen he
entered the studio of Shunsho and adopted the name of Shunro. Under this
name he produced actors in the orthodox Shunsho manner and melodramatic
illustrations for the popular romances of the day. About 1786 a quarrel
with Shunsho, due to the pupil's insubordination, led to Hokusai's
expulsion, and he thereupon launched out for himself, to begin his long
life of poverty and madly enthusiastic labour.
His work may be divided roughly into three periods. In the first he
followed the traditions of Shunsho, Shunyei, Utamaro, and others of his
contemporaries, with great skill but no special originality. His
countless book-illustrations of this time were all conceived with lively
fancy and vigour; but perhaps the finest works of this, his conventional
period, are the very wide prints and surimono in which, against a
delicately suggested landscape, move extraordinarily graceful women's
figures not unlike those of Utamaro. Already he was a master of drawing;
but he kept incessantly at his studies under many teachers, learning,
among other things, European perspective from Shiba Kokan. His work was
done in this and the following periods under a dozen different names, of
which Sori, Kako, Shunro, and Taito are the most important.
In 1812 began his second or realistic period, with the publication of
the first book of his fifteen-volume series of drawings, the "Mangwa."
In this epoch he turned from the styles of his predecessors and launched
into a hitherto unknown journalistic realism. With a lively sense of the
comic and the burlesque, and an insatiable interest in the homeliest
details of life, he threw overboard all formal stylistic quality and set
sail on a riotous voyage of naturalistic discovery.
The "Mangwa," which may serve as a type of his whole production in this
realistic period, is praised sometimes as his greatest work. In it we
shall find not only his most striking _tours-de-force_ as a draughtsman
but also the key to his weakness. All existence thrilled him as it did
Walt Whitman; and each object on which he turned his eyes stirred him
with the desire to record it in his pages. Day after day he worked like
a madman, throwing off his sketches of man, beast, and phantom, of rock,
river, and sea, in endless profusion and with inexhaustible ingenuity.
And though we grant our admiration to the enthusiasm, sharp vision, and
clever draughtsmanship of these sheets, we may still find in this
undiscriminating passion a quality incompatible with the highest
reaches of artistic greatness. There is something vulgar, childish,
under-developed in the mental attitude revealed; it seems a coarse greed
for all experience, unlighted by the power to judge and reject, or by
any consciousness of the ranks and hierarchies of beauty. It is a vast
and dull enthusiasm; a celebration of the victory of the will to live
over the will to perfect; a triumph of meaningless sensation over the
just judgments of the discriminating mind. All shapes seem equally
interesting and beautiful to it--all smells equally sweet. As Pater
writes of Balzac--a man who was in many ways not unlike Hokusai--this
artist "had an excess of curiosity--curiosity not duly tempered with the
desire of beauty."
I can never look through the "Mangwa" without a sense of distressing
chaos and a longing for the purer beauties which more finely organized
artists have evoked from the heterogeneous welter of the seen world. But
just this welter is at this time Hokusai's theme. "A debauch of
sketches," Fenollosa calls it. In this work Hokusai stands beside
Harunobu exactly as Whitman stands beside Keats--a more interesting mind
but a far less perfect artist.
"Hokusai is incomparable," writes the commentator who furnished the
introduction to one of his books. "While all his predecessors were more
or less slaves to classical tradition and inherited rules, he alone
emancipated his brush from all such fetters, and drew according to the
dictates of his heart." True: and this was his curse. No man has ever
lived with heart profound and subtle enough for such emancipation. Nor
have the supreme artists ever attempted it. In Hokusai's case this
upstart-abandoning of all tradition was an error from which he was able
later to retrieve himself; but so great was the impression produced by
his vulgarities on the mob that even to this day popular Japanese art
has remained under the cloud of it.
Hokusai himself did recover. In his third period, the stylistic one, the
greatness that was in him transcended his petty interest in the trivial
idiosyncrasies of seen things, and he created those visions which
constitute his lasting glory. Between 1823 and 1830 he issued those
series, "The Thirty-six Views of Fuji," "The Bridges," "The Waterfalls,"
"The Loocho Islands," and "The Imagery of the Poets," in which we hail
him as master. No longer the dupe of realism, he brings us his dreams.
"The Thirty-six Views of Fuji" stands as one of his two greatest works.
Here, in the forty-six plates that constitute the main series and the
supplement, the same motive is treated recurrently, but with infinite
variety. He depicts Fuji, the sacred mountain, in storm and calm, in
mist and sunlight--sometimes dominating the colossally empty frame of
the design, sometimes receding to a mere speck in the distance; and
around the noble peak beat the waves of the sea and the foam of the
clouds and the restless stream of human life, in a great epic of
infinite diversity and profound unity.
[Illustration: HOKUSAI: FUJI, SEEN FROM THE PASS OF MISHIMA, PROVINCE OF
KAHI.
One of the Series "Thirty-six Views of Fuji." Size 10½ × 15. Signed
_Saki no Hokusai I-itsu, hitsu_.
_Plate 50._]
In this series his trivial realism is forgotten, or employed only in
just subordination. Throwing aside his earlier vulgar absorption in the
minutiæ of existence, he concentrated his vision on one conception, one
chosen impression, so sharply and personally seen that he evoked a new
style in landscape. Much it borrowed from tradition; but the flavour was
Hokusai's. These designs are, primarily, magnificent studies in linear
composition. The great sweep of Fuji's slope is related to the rhythm of
every other line in the picture. And the line-dominance is preserved by
the use of the simplest and most original of colour-schemes--green,
blue, and brown--broadly laid on in large masses. A highly decorative
quality and great boldness are the result.
The justly famous "Wave" belongs to this series. Here for the first time
in our survey of the prints do we find elemental fury depicted with
grandiose eloquence. In the majestic composition of the "Great Tree"
(Plate 50) the calm sublimity of nature and the infinitely minute,
vermin-like aspect of man is superbly expressed. In the "Tama River"
(Plate 49) Hokusai gives us a sweep of wave and shore, mist and
mountain, that his great predecessors, the landscape-painters of Sung
days in China, might have envied. In all these prints he relates man and
nature to each other with a vividness and dramatic power foreign to his
great rival Hiroshige.
The world which Hokusai pictures in this series is not the real world,
but Hokusai's highly personal translation of it into terms of superb
imagination. A thousand memory-stored impressions combine to make the
sharp composite of each design; and it is to use the term in its
technical Platonic sense, the Idea of the scene that he flashes before
us. Herein lies the abnormal vitality that emanates from these pictures.
"We feel," says Mr. Binyon, "that the world holds more wonders than we
dreamed of, sources of power and exhilaration which Hokusai has
revealed, and which we may go and discover for ourselves."
Hokusai's other great work was a series of ten upright prints of very
large size, "The Imagery of the Poets." It returns in feeling, though
not in technique, to the style of the classic masters; and remains,
because of its high seriousness of mood and its sweeping magnificence of
composition, at the very top of all Hokusai's work. Of all his thousands
of designs, the one that is supreme is probably the print of this set
which depicts the famous Chinese poet Li Peh beside the chasm and
cascade of Luh.
Even his latest years were crowded with continued efforts. In 1849, at
the age of eighty-nine years, he died.
Fine and well-preserved Hokusai prints are not common. His "Poets" and
really brilliant impressions of his "Thirty-six Fuji" are very rare,
particularly the former. Poor impressions of the latter are numerous.
Practically all of Hokusai's most famous prints have been reproduced,
and the collector must be on his guard against these worthless sheets.
One of the best-known judges in Europe was recently deceived by a
fraudulent set of the "Poets." Hokusai's fine bird-and-flower designs
and his large early surimono are rare; as also are good copies of his
famous books, the "Mangwa" and the "One Hundred Views of Fuji." Numerous
late blurred impressions of these are extant, and should be avoided. His
other books are not uncommon.
[Illustration: HOKUSAI: THE MONKEY BRIDGE--TWILIGHT AND RISING MOON.
Size 14½ × 6½. Signed _Hokusai ga_.
_Plate 51._]
PUPILS AND FOLLOWERS OF HOKUSAI.
Hokusai had many pupils; no one of them equalled the landscape work of
the master, though several of them produced designs of great interest.
As a body they were distinguished for their matchless work in the field
of surimono.
The surimono was a type of print not sold in the market; it was made
upon special order of private individuals for use as a festival-greeting,
an invitation, a congratulatory memorial, or an announcement. Its size
was generally small, about five or six inches square; printed on very
soft thick paper, it displayed the utmost complexity of the technique of
colour-printing. The number of blocks was lavishly multiplied; the most
subtle gradations of colour were contrived; and the effect was
heightened by every variety of gauffrage, gold, silver, and bronze
powders, and mother-of-pearl dust. Yet in spite of all this effort, the
surimono is, in the opinion of many collectors, not as a rule very
important as a work of art. In the ordinary surimono the medium employed
has outstripped the motive expressed, and what should have been the
means has become the sole end. Nevertheless they are unrivalled as
specimens of workmanship and printing, and the best of them are highly
treasured. Some of Hokusai's pupils excelled their master in this form.
[Illustration: GAKUTEI.]
GAKUTEI, who also signed himself Gogaku, produced perhaps the finest
surimono of any that we know. His work in this field was voluminous and
distinguished. He also issued a few exceedingly decorative landscapes.
HOKKEI stands beside Gakutei as a brilliant producer of surimono,
closely in the manner of Hokusai. Some of his landscapes, printed in
blue and green, have a curious charm and individuality.
HOKUJU produced landscapes in a strange semi-European style, with
angular mountains and unusual cloud effects.
[Illustration: HOKKEI.]
YANAGAWA SHIGENOBU, the son-in-law of Hokusai, copied his master
closely; some of his work has great charm. According to some authorities
he is the same person to whom Hokusai gave his discarded name,
KATSUSHIKA TAITO. Certain prints signed Taito are still somewhat in
doubt, notably the well-known leaping fish and the moon-and-bridge
scene, both from the "Harimaze Han"; Mr. Happer has brought forward
evidence that these are by Taito, but many authorities still hold to the
idea that they are the work of Hokusai under his early name. Among the
numberless Hokusai pupils may be named: HOKUBA, HOKUGA, NIHO, SHIGEYAMA,
GOKEI, SHINSAI, ISAI, HOKUUN, HOKUYEI, HOKUTEI, HOKUTAI, HOKUSUI,
TAIGAKU, RENSHI, JUZAN, YASUMICHI, BOKUSEN, KEIJU, RYUSAI, GANGAKUSAI,
KEIRI, HOKUYO.
HIROSHIGE.
As merchantmen from Eastern Isles
In caravels of purple came,
With freight that alien heart beguiles,
Incense and cloths of woven flame,
So down the gulfs of elder time
Thy glorious pinions bear to me
Mad treasure from the unknown clime
Of worlds beyond the Western Sea.
Now in my bay the sails are furled.
But I, who guess their native skies,
Henceforth must roam that golden world,
Where strange winds whisper and strange scents rise.--
Immortal Fuji's snowy crown--
Wide seas with sky of amethyst--
A street where torrents thunder down--
Branches that toss against the mist--
Smooth hills and hill-girt plains where run
Streams through the rice-fields steeped in heat--
Pines gnarled above a sunken sun--
Cold heights where cloud and mountain meet.
Now visions enter to my breast
That from thy passion won their birth,
When like a bride in radiance dressed
Before thee glowed the summers of earth.
What magic gave thee to behold
This fairness, secret from our sight,
Where morning walks the world in gold,
Or seas turn grey with coming night?
For thee, as when the South Winds blow.
Lands burst to bloom. On every shore
Where beauty dwells thou didst bestow
A perilous mortal beauty more.
Twilight and morn on Biwa's breast--
Harima's sands and lordly pines--
White Hira-mountain's winter crest--
The low red dusk round Yedo shrines--
The moon beneath the Monkey Bridge--
The Poisoned River's brooding gloom--
Rose-dawn on some Tokaido ridge--
Pale water-worlds of lotus bloom.
Our toiling race is with the day
Wearied, and restless with the night,--
Unpausing, on its tombward way,
For fear or wonder or delight,--
Unwatchful, mid the sombre things
That mesh us in a vain employ,
For peace that half of heaven brings,
For beauty that is wholly joy.
Lover for whom the world was wide!
Down lighted pathways thou didst move,
Where hills and seas and cities hide
So much for weary men to love.--
The mist of cherry-trees in spring--
Ships sleeping on some bright lagoon--
A swallow's dusky sweeping wing--
Steep Ishiyama's autumn moon--
The changing marvels of faint rain--
The foam that hides the torrent's stream--
The eagle o'er the snowy plain--
Sea-twilights haunted as a dream.
Speaking, thou laidst thy brush aside--
"On a long journey I repair--
Regions beyond the Western Tide--
To view the wonderful landscapes there."
Yet, at Adzuma, loosed from all
Thy mortal bonds, made free to roam,
Methinks thou couldst not break the thral
That held thee to thy human home.
Surely no heaven could harbour thee,
Nor other world of keener bliss,
Who didst with such deep constancy
Worship the loveliness of this.
Moon-flooded throngs in Yedo streets--
Dawn quickened travellers on their road--
Lone ocean-fronting hill retreats--
An Oiran's perilous-sweet abode--
A mighty Buddha by the sea
Where all the wondering pilgrims meet--
Immortal Fuji, changelessly
Watching the world around her feet.
[Illustration: HIROSHIGE: HOMING GEESE AT KATADA--TWILIGHT.
One of the Series "Eight Famous Views of Lake Biwa." Size 9 × 13½.
Signed _Hiroshige ga_.
_Plate 52._]
[Illustration: HIROSHIGE.]
Hiroshige takes rank by unanimous consent as the foremost landscape
artist produced by the Ukioye School. His prints, known to every one,
have been more greatly admired in Western lands than the prints of any
other artist except Hokusai. Hokusai's main concern was with the
fundamental architecture of landscape; he outlined the structure of
mountains, rocks, rivers, waves, and bridges with a hard and brilliant
sharpness; but Hiroshige, less rigid in his treatment, seems chiefly
intent upon the more delicate and transitory appearances of cloud and
mist, rain and snow, sunrise and dusk, that give to a landscape at each
moment so much of its specific character. These atmospheric effects of
his are justly famous. Few landscape painters of any race have succeeded
in rendering so finely the mood of a scene. No one can be insensible to
the delicate peace and sweetness of a twilight like that of Plate 52, or
the vigorous life of wide sea spaces in Plate 53, or the heavy hush of
nightfall over the snow-covered village of Plate 54. Even more
impressive are the luminous and solemn dusk on the Sumida River (Plate
55) and the mystery of the print called "The Bow-Moon" which appears as
the frontispiece.
_The Bow-Moon._
Where the torrent leaps and falls,
And the hanging cliffs look down,
Cloven grey and ruddy walls
Each with ragged forest-crown,
There across the chasmèd deep
Spans a gossamer bridge on high;
And below, from gulfs of sleep,
Mounts the Bow-Moon up the sky.
Blue dusk, thickening whence she rose.
Her abysses veils; above
Moves she into twilight's close
As faint strains of music move.
On the eastern slope her feet,
White, in trancèd ecstasy,
Climb, a ghost of heaven so sweet
That the spent day cannot die.
Walled by crags on either side
Glimmers forth her figure wan,
Straying like some lonely bride
Through the halls of Kubla Khan.
Pilgrim of the riven deep!
Whereso'er thy lover lie,
Sleep to him is troubled sleep
While his Bow-Moon haunts the sky.
Hiroshige's great strength lay in his genius for strikingly effective
composition, and in the skill with which he adapted his designs to the
limitations of the colour-print technique. He reduced the pictured scene
to a few simple elements of a highly decorative character, and managed
to make them so symbolic and suggestive that we do not miss the
multitude of details which he purposely omits. A strongly dominant unity
of impression is the result. His finest designs convey a sense of
personal feeling that even the Barbizon artists at their best do not
surpass. With the limited resources of the wood block, he achieved
subtle renderings of distance, aerial perspective, atmosphere, and
light; and the poetic quality of his designs has endeared him to
generations of print-lovers in a way more personal than is the case with
any other artist. His work will stand beside the "Liber Studiorum" of
Turner; it remains perhaps the most complete and magnificent landscape
record that any land has ever had.
One curious characteristic of these prints at once strikes the Western
eye--the use of a band of dark colour along the top of the picture,
which is shaded gradually down into the clear white of the lower sky.
This convention serves several purposes. It provides a mass to balance
the colour at the bottom of the design, bringing the whole sheet into
the picture and not leaving the upper portion as a mere margin above the
landscape proper. It also creates depth and atmosphere, setting the
brightest part of the design, the middle, back into the frame created by
the upper and lower masses. And finally, it renders with peculiar
accuracy the effect of gradual vanishing which we actually experience as
we look at a landscape: in our visual field, the sky does not end in a
sharp line, but blurs and darkens at the upper edge of the space that
our eyes survey.
Hiroshige's bird and flower designs are works of extraordinary freshness
and loveliness; a unique and idyllic charm emanates from them, and as
compositions they take high rank (Plate 56).
Alilt against the emerald sky,
A tiny violet songster swings,
Clutching a branch, in ecstasy
Of light and height and skiey things.
Singing, he swings; and swinging, I
For once am showered with joy of wings.
Keen and pure, of a magic power,
Thy rapture stirs what was never stirred.
Thou hast brought to earth a cloudland dower,
The joy of the small sweet singing bird.
All time is richer for thy hour
Of delicate music, gravely heard.
Does the iris droop beneath the heat?
Its weariness finds voice in thee.
Does the pheasant run with snow-clogged feet?
Winter is theirs who thy vision see.
Is summer's glow to the swallow sweet?
Thou hast captured its summer eternally.
Each thou hast wrought as a lyric note
Pure with one mood of sky and trees
And flowers, and tiny lives that float
Or dart or poise in world of these.
The painter's hand, the thrush's throat--
Which masters best these melodies?
Gusty rain through the tree-tops blown
And a bird that scuds where the grey gusts hiss--
Sapphire wings and a golden crown
Flung skyward in unconscious bliss--
No rare enchanted bird has known
As thou hast known the savour of this!
And winning it, thou hast cast aside
Thy native bonds of mortal birth,
Flinging the spirit-pinions wide
Above this world of weary worth,
To float and poise and skyward ride
With those whose realm is not the earth--
The peacock in his proud repose--
Wild geese that rush across the moon--
The little sleepy owl that knows
The wind-among-the-tree-tops tune--
The kingfisher that darts and glows
Over the reeds of the lagoon--
The flower-lured humming-bird that weaves
Spirals more delicate than they--
Sanderlings that on moonlit eves
Over the wave-crest swoop and play--
The crane that shores of sunset leaves
For sunset skies of far away.
[Illustration: HIROSHIGE: THE SEVEN RI FERRY, KUWANA, AT THE MOUTH OF
THE KISO RIVER--SUNSET.
One of the Series "The Fifty-three Post Stations of the Tokaido Road."
Size 9 × 14. Signed _Hiroshige ga_.
_Plate 53._]
Hiroshige was born in 1796, just as the great period of figure-designing
was drawing to its close. As a youth he attempted to gain entrance to
the studio of Toyokuni; but the fortunate fact that there was no room
for him forced him to enter the studio of the less popular but more
subtly gifted Toyohiro. Here he studied landscape, a branch in which he
was destined far to outstrip his master. That delicate genius which was
Toyohiro's cannot but have produced its effect upon the pupil; and it
pleases one to fancy that it is some echo of Toyohiro's inarticulate
refinement of feeling that gains at last full expression in some of
Hiroshige's most beautiful landscapes.
In 1828 Toyohiro died; and Hiroshige became independent. His earliest
works probably antedate this time a little; they consist of a few
figures of women and actors, and two very fine horizontal landscape
series. These were the "Toto Meisho," or earliest series of Yedo views,
distinguished by curious long red clouds in each plate; and the "Honcho
Meisho," a group of views of the main island of Japan. Particularly the
first of these sets contains work of great beauty.
Shortly after 1830 Hiroshige found occasion to travel from Yedo, the
northern capital, to Kyoto, the southern capital, along the great
post-road which he has immortalized--the Tokaido. There resulted his
series of horizontal plates, "The Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido,"
completed about 1834. This remains his best-known and unsurpassed work.
Plate 53 is from this series. Each picture records with unfailing
vividness and originality some famous scene along the crowded national
highway. For reasons unknown to us, Hiroshige prepared new designs for
some of the plates after the original publication of the series; and
these variation-plates are of great interest to collectors.
Of the many series that followed, only the most important can be named
here. All are of horizontal shape unless otherwise designated.
_Naniwa Meisho_, ten views of Osaka--chiefly crowded wharf and market
scenes.
_Kyoto Meisho_, ten views of Kyoto; a varied and delightful series
containing many fine prints.
[Illustration: HIROSHIGE: THE VILLAGE OF FUJI KAWA--EVENING SNOW.
One of the Vertical Tokaido Series. Size 13½ × 9. Signed _Hiroshige ga_.
_Plate 54._]
_Omi Hakkei_, the Eight Famous Views of Lake Biwa; the most poetic and
possibly the greatest of his works (Plate 52).
_Kanazawa Hakkei_, the Eight Famous Views of the Inlet of Kanazawa;
distinguished by a fine simplicity of composition.
_Yedo Kinko Hakkei_, the Eight Famous Views of Yedo; a series of
masterpieces, of great rarity.
_Chiushingura_, sixteen scenes from the story of the Forty-seven Ronin;
fine dramatic compositions, with powerful blacks and greys
predominating.
_Toto Meisho_ and _Yedo Meisho_, names under which more than fifty
different series of Yedo views were issued by different publishers.
These sets include many masterpieces.
_Nihon Minato Tsukushi_, ten views of the Harbours of Japan.
_Toto Meisho_, a series of narrow upright panels of Yedo; several are
very distinguished.
_Mu Tamagawa_, views of the Six Tama Rivers.
_Series of Fishes._
_Kwa Cho_, upright panels of birds and flowers, some on full-sized
sheets, others very narrow; uneven in quality, some being masterpieces
(Plate 56).
_Fan Prints_, with landscapes or bird designs.
In the year 1842 began the so-called Prohibition Period of twelve years,
when the sale of actor and courtesan prints was forbidden. The effect of
this was to redouble the demand for landscape prints; and Hiroshige was
called upon to supply it. This he did by issuing, among others, the
following sets:--
_Tokaido Series_, published by Maruzei; next best to the "Great Tokaido
Series" of 1834.
_Tokaido Series_, published by Yesaki; slightly smaller than the "Great
Series"; when well-printed, which is rare, they take a very high place.
_Tokaido Series_, published by Sanoki, half-plate size; including many
charming designs.
_Kisokaido_, the Sixty-nine Stations of the Kisokaido Road between Yedo
and Kyoto; a series in which Keisai Yeisen collaborated, producing
twenty-three of the seventy plates. Many of the plates are
uninteresting; but a quarter of them are superb. The set was reprinted
at least twice in inferior editions.
In this, which we may call the Kisokaido Period of Hiroshige's work, he
abandoned to a certain extent the delicate drawing of his Great Tokaido
and Yedo Period and employed larger unbroken colour masses, aiming at
broader effects.
In the fifties, Hiroshige abandoned almost entirely the horizontal or
lateral prints of his earlier days and adopted the upright shape. In
this form he produced the following series, as well as others not
named:--
_Upright Tokaido_, published by Tsutaya, 1855; a fine series when well
printed, but the late editions were crude in colour (Plate 54).
_Views of the Sixty-nine Provinces_, 1856; the rare first edition, which
is much the finer, is distinguished by having five seals on the face of
each plate. It contains a great deal of uninteresting work, but also ten
or fifteen masterpieces.
[Illustration: HIROSHIGE: THE OMMAYA EMBANKMENT, ON THE SUMIDA RIVER AT
ASAKUSA--EVENING.
One of the Series "The Hundred Views of Yedo." Size 13 × 9. Signed
_Hiroshige ga_.
_Plate 55._]
_Three Triptychs._--The Rapids of Awa No Naruto, Moonlight View of
Kanazawa, and Snow Mountains on the Kiso Highway, all dated 1857, and
all magnificent.
_Two Kakemono-ye_, very large--the Monkey Bridge and the Snow Gorge of
the Fuji River, things of matchless impressiveness.
_The One Hundred Views of Yedo_, 1858; 119 plates, including, besides
much rubbish, 25 masterpieces (Plate 55).
_The Thirty-six Views of Fuji_, 1859; inferior, upon the whole, to his
earlier work. There are in existence very few well-printed copies.
In the last two or three of these series it is more than probable that
Hiroshige was assisted by his pupil Hiroshige II. The finest plates in
all these later series are equal to the master's most splendid earlier
designs; but certain of the plates are of so banal a character that it
is impossible to believe them to be from the great man's hand. Doubtless
the distinction between the work of the two artists cannot always be
drawn with certainty; but as a general rule we may regard the work as
that of Hiroshige II if we find the figures stiff and wooden, if the
composition is lacking in any central unity, or if some large ugly
object is thrust into the foreground with the hope of thus putting the
background into its proper relative place. At this period less care was
taken with the printing, and the majority of prints from these later
series are miserable impressions that libel Hiroshige's powers. When
well printed they can be very fine indeed; but the poor copies
outnumber the good a hundred to one.
In the year 1858, just after the publication of the "One Hundred Views
of Yedo," Hiroshige died. He did not live to see the plates for his
"Thirty-six Views of Fuji" completed. One of the collector's treasures
is a striking memorial portrait by Kunisada that was issued shortly
after Hiroshige's death. The old man is represented with a finely shaped
head, powerful, quiet features, and eyes as piercing as an eagle's.
The number of Hiroshige's different designs runs into at least three or
four thousand, not counting his illustrated books; and there must be in
existence a hundred thousand prints by him. His work is almost as
plentiful as that of all the other artists taken together. In spite of
this great abundance, the collector finds it difficult to-day to obtain
many really fine prints by him. The prints usually offered are either in
bad condition, or they are careless impressions produced without proper
attention to the difficult problem of printing. The rush occasioned by
Hiroshige's popularity naturally led to slighted work. Even in these
poor copies a certain fascination of design generally appears; but it is
only in the carefully printed copies, where the register is accurate and
the colours are delicately graded, luminous, and soft, that the full
beauty of Hiroshige's conception is made clear. Familiarity with the
finer impressions forever spoils the attentive observer's taste for the
crude ordinary copies. The task of the collector of Hiroshige's work
to-day resolves itself into a search for these rare and precious
early prints. The collector should lose no opportunity to compare
different copies of the same print; only thus can he educate his eyes
sufficiently to appreciate the vast difference between fine and inferior
examples. The difference, once grasped, is unforgettable.
[Illustration: HIROSHIGE: BIRD AND FLOWERS.
Size 15 × 7. Signed _Hiroshige, hitsu_.
_Plate 56._]
The reader who desires detailed information as to the long list of
Hiroshige's work is referred to the Sale Catalogue of the Collection of
John Stewart Happer (Sotheby, Wilkinson, and Hodge, London), which is
the present foundation for any real study of the subject. A valuable
article on seal-dates by Major J. J. O'Brien Sexton, in the
_International Studio_ for May, 1913, should also be consulted by the
student.
THE SECOND HIROSHIGE.
HIROSHIGE II, born 1826, was the adopted son of the great Hiroshige; as
we have seen, he probably assisted in some of the master's last work.
After Hiroshige's death the pupil assumed the master's name, previous to
that he had been known as Ichiusai Shigenobu. He is not to be confused
with Yanagawa Shigenobu, Hokusai's pupil.
It was once thought that Hiroshige II produced all the upright prints
signed Hiroshige. Mr. Happer has once for all discredited this idea, and
it is no longer held by any one.
Some of the work of Hiroshige II is very good; upon the accidental
destruction of one of the plates of the "One Hundred Yedo Series," he
produced a new design that is admirable. But he lacked originality, and
at his best merely trod in the footsteps of his master. Most of his
designs are flat and uninspired. About 1865 he fell into disgrace, and
moved to Yokohama, where he gave up his name, and is said to have worked
henceforth under the name of Hirochika II. He died in 1869.
There was also a Hiroshige III, who died in 1896--a wholly commonplace
and unimportant artist, who assumed the great name about 1865.
FOLLOWERS AND CONTEMPORARIES OF HIROSHIGE.
KEISAI YEISEN, who collaborated with Hiroshige in the "Kisokaido
Series," was born in 1791 and died in 1851. He produced many
figure-prints, following Yeizan, in the debased style of his
contemporaries. His landscapes, however, are his most interesting work.
Many of these follow Hiroshige tamely; but a few, in the older Kano
manner, are surprising and splendid designs. One of these, a rare sheet
depicting a bridge and mountains in moonlight, in _kakamono-ye_ form,
must be regarded as a masterpiece. His ordinary work is rather
undistinguished.
[Illustration: YEISEN.]
GOSOTEI TOYOKUNI produced, besides some unimportant actor-prints, a few
fine landscapes in a very hard, sharp style. Chief among these is a
"Tamagawa Series," each plate of which has a large purple panel at the
top. The artist's original name was Toyoshige. Born in 1777, he became
the adopted son of Toyokuni I; after Toyokuni's death in 1825, he
married Toyokuni's widow and called himself Toyokuni II, a title which
Kunisada also claimed.
UTAGAWA KUNIYOSHI, born in 1798, was the best pupil of Toyokuni I, and
an artist of more power than most of his contemporaries. His figures
sometimes have dramatic force of a rather fine kind; but the majority of
them are crude. His landscapes are his greatest claim to fame. Among
them are some of extraordinary quality. They have hardly been
sufficiently appreciated as yet by collectors. Kuniyoshi died in 1861.
[Illustration: KUNIYOSHI.]
KATSUKAWA SHUNSEN, a pupil of Shunyei, produced, besides ordinary
figure-prints, a few graceful landscapes, chiefly in tones of green and
rose.
HASEGAWA SADANOBU, who has been mentioned under the Osaka School, was an
arrant imitator of Hiroshige. The Hayashi Catalogue, page 236,
reproduces a print of his that is nothing more than a replica of one of
Hiroshige's "Sixty-nine Province Series"; and the Victoria and Albert
Museum Catalogue, Plate XLVI, shows a Lake Biwa print that copies
Hiroshige's half-plate "Omi Hakkei" almost line for line.
SADAHIDE and YOSHIYUKI, both Osaka artists, may be mentioned among the
unimportant landscape designers of the second half of the nineteenth
century.
To-day the old art of the colour-print is completely dead. But an
entirely new school has produced some pleasing though weak designs of
birds, flowers, and landscapes; and some attractive illustrated books
have also been issued. The larger part of such work bears the obvious
stamp of having been produced for the tourist and the foreign market,
and has not a trace of that vigour and integrity which marked the prints
of the great masters, whose inspiration sprang from and spoke to the
heart of the Japanese people. European influence has produced a bad
effect upon the style of these modern prints; and the weak colour used
tends toward prettiness rather than toward beauty. It is idle to hope
that real vitality will ever return to animate this lost art.
VIII
THE
COLLECTOR