Dora Amsden

“ Displaying less of the artist than the genius at legerdemain were Hokusai’s street tricks—almost reprehensible did we not know the dire straits to which genius is often reduced. An eager expectant crowd dogged his footsteps and watched with delighted curiosity, while he sketched landscapes, upside down, with an egg or a bottle, or a wine measure, anything that came to his hand,—changing with bewildering effect from huge figures of Chinese heroes and demigods to microscopic drawings on grains of rice, and pictures made out of chance blots of ink. ”

“ Lines of beauty cannot be manufactured; as well imagine the slender stem of the lotus encircled in steel, its curves determined by a multiplicity of wires and tapes.
Although the leaders of Ukiyo-ye followed so closely in the footsteps of Kiyonaga that his type of face stamps the years from 1780 to 1790, yet his style was too classic, too noble to suit the taste of the Yedo populace, which, in its thirst for realism, had become depraved. Rather than lower his standard he chose to resign, leaving the field to his followers, Yeishi, Utamaro and Toyokuni. ”

“ Preoccupation with graves perhaps enabled the Japanese to face death so readily, even embracing it upon the slightest pretext.
Genroku was the acme of the age of chivalry. Its tales of deadly duels and fierce vendettas are the delight of the nation. The history of the Forty-seven Ronin equals any mediæval tale of bloodthirsty vengeance and feudal devotion. This Japanese vendetta of the seventeenth century is still re-enacted upon the stage, and remains the most popular drama of the day, and the actor designers of Torii ever delighted in it as a subject for illustration. ”

“ Hiroshige, the versatile painter, lover of landscape and ethereal artist of snow and mist; Hokusai, the prophet, and regenerator of Ukiyo-ye. He was the artisan-artist, in the land which recognizes no inferior arts, and the Mang-wa, consisting of studies as spontaneously thrown off as those in the sketch-book Giorgione carried in his girdle, was published for the use of workmen. Living in simplicity and poverty he gave his life to the people, and the impression of his genius is stamped upon their work. ”

“ Utamaro blent with this convention, so little human, a mutinous grace, a spiritual comprehension; he kept the consecrated lines, but made them approach the human. These “effigies of women” became individuals; in one word, he is an idealist, he “makes a goddess out of a courtesan.” No detail of her anatomy escapes his eye, no grace of line or beauty of contour. M. de Goncourt, in detailing the great prints of Utamaro, transports us to the Orient. He unrolls the film of memory, so that again the Japanese woman stands, reclines, and lives before us. ”

“ O truly appreciate Japanese prints, a knowledge of the language of the block must first be acquired, then the pursuit has an indescribable charm, inexplicable excepting to the initiated, but to those who have fallen under the spell, the love of Ukiyo-ye gems becomes a veritable passion. The collector of old prints must be guided in his selection by the quality of the paper, which should be soft and vibrant, the fibrous tentacles upon its surface often forming shadows where it has been exposed to the dust. ”

“ In examining the sets of impressions, illustrating the popular story, it is hard to give preference to any special artist: to choose [Pg 20] between the Utamaro-like violets and greens of Yeisen; the rich dark tints and fine backgrounds of Kunisada; the delicately massed detail of Toyokuni, unlike the usual boldness of his style, and the varied sword-play of the versatile Hiroshige, set in a frosted, snowy landscape. ”

“ They are the result of a threefold combination: of a paper marvellously prepared from the bark of the shrub, Kozo, diluted with the milk of rice flour and a gummy decoction extracted from the roots of the hydrangea and hibiscus; of dyes, into the secret of whose alchemy no modern artist can penetrate, it being safe to say the early “Tan-ye” and “Beni-ye” prints can never be reproduced; of the application of those colours by the master engraver’s fingers—that wizard hand of the Orient into whose finger-tips are distilled the mysteries of bygone centuries. ”

“ The two great schools, Tosa and Kano, flourished independently until the middle of the eighteenth century, when the genius of the popular artists, forming the school of Ukiyo-ye, gradually fused the traditions of Tosa and Kano, absorbing the methods of these rival schools,—which, differing in technique and motive, were united in their proud disdain of the new art which dared to represent the manners and customs of the common people. ”

“ The leading light in art in the beginning of the fifteenth century was Cho Densu, the Fra Angelico of Japan, who, a simple monk, serving in a Kyoto temple, must in a trance of religious and artistic ecstasy have beheld a spectrum of fadeless dyes, so wondrous were the colours he lavished upon the draperies of his saints and sages. ”

“ Now we see a strange transposition in the aims of the popular artists. Harunobu, though a pupil of Shigenaga, the printer, took for his models the subjects of the painter Shunsui, successor to Miyagawa Choshun, and by rejecting stage motives discarded the Torii tradition. From Shunsui, Harunobu borrowed the ineffable grace and refinement which breathe from the forms of his women, from the painter he stole colour harmonies and designs with landscape backgrounds, which the Torii School had hitherto ignored. ”

“ Yedo, the new capital of the usurping Tokugawas, now became the Mecca of genius, rivalling the ancient metropolis Kyoto, for the great Shoguns encouraged art in all forms, not disdaining to enroll themselves as pupils to the masters in painting and lacquer. The greatest ruler became one of the greatest artists, even assuming the art title of Sendai Shogun. In this age the height of perfection was reached in metal work, both chased and cast. ”

“ The Japanese landscape painter sums up nature in broad lines, to which all details are more or less subordinated. This rendering of the momentary vision of life and light,—the spirit, not the letter of the scene,—is what is meant by Impressionism. Whereas, however the French impressionists express light by modelling surfaces, the Japanese adhere rigidly to line, and rely upon gradations of colour and the effect of washes to produce the illusion of light. Their landscape is expressed in clear-cut lines and flat masses of colour. ”

“ Isis in Egypt reigned, crowned by the lotus, and there the tender, flowing lines became sublime, monumental, fitted to symbolize death and eternal repose. In Japan its joyous curves represent life, immortality, and, delicately sensuous, they conjure up visions of ideal beauty. ”

“ The tradition of China showed in all their landscapes, which reflected ethereal vistas classically rendered, of an alien land. Therefore Matahei was contemptuously disowned by Tosa for depicting scenes from the life of his countrymen, yet the technique of Kano and Tosa were the birthright of the artists of Ukiyo-ye, an inalienable inheritance in form, into which they breathed the spirit of life, thus revivifying an art grown cold and academical, and frosted with tradition. ”

“ Kano yielded to Chinese influence, Tosa combated it, and strove for a purely national art, Ukiyo-ye bridged the chasm, and became the exponent of both schools, bringing about an expansion in art which could never have been realized by these aristocratic rivals. The vigour and force of the conquering Shoguns led Kano, while the lustre of Tosa was an emanation from the sanctified and veiled Mikado. ”

“ The introduction of genre painting, though attributed by Walter Pater to Giorgione, applies equally to the work of Harunobu and his follower Koriusai. “He is the inventor of genre, of those easily movable pictures which serve neither for uses of devotion nor of allegorical or historical teaching: little groups of real men and women, amid congruous furniture or landscape, morsels of actual life, conversation or music or play, refined upon and idealized till they come to seem like glimpses of life from afar. ”

“ The brush is the Japanese alphabet—it is their fairy wand, their playmate—they learn to paint intuitively, though later the most assiduous study is given to acquire the characteristic touch of the school with which they affiliate. The brush is their génie, subservient to their imagination ”

“ There are often exquisite examples of colouring to be found among the later impressions from the old blocks, but the lovely colours and nuances of colours conjured by the artists, designers and printers in loving collaboration, before commercialism had invaded Japan, can never be seen again, even as the disciples of William Morris seem unable to reproduce the beautiful shades which the genius of the master workman evolved from the dyeing-vat. ”

“ Oh, the beautiful black backgrounds, controlling the scintillating mass of colour! Black robes sown with chrysanthemums, or showered with pine-needles, worked in white. Black dresses, where finely woven baskets are mingled with sceptres of office! ‘Oh! les belles robes!’ he cries, where flights of cranes dissolve into the distance, where birds are fluttering, where lacy fretwork of fans and little garlands are interwoven!—a motive delighted in by Utamaro as a framework for beloved faces. ”

“ Regardless of sneers, he followed the bent of his genius, which led him into oriental fields. He felt the sweet influence of such artists as Hokusai and Hiroshige. He took advantage of the centuries of thought given to drapery, in the land where, as with Greece, dress is a national problem; where no fads and follies of fashion fostered by commercialism are allowed; where the artists design dress, and the people gratefully and sincerely adopt their ideas. ”

“ Ukiyo-ye art is bound up with print development, and the climax of xylography had been reached in the time of Hokusai. Japanese book illustration, and single-sheet printing, revolutionized the world’s art. The great connoisseurs of colour tell us that nowhere else is there anything like it,—so rich and so full, that a print comes to have every quality of a complete painting. ”

“ The Japanese painter knows that the true master selects, does not draw all he sees, but concentrates his efforts towards reproducing the lines of movement, and in figures, the lines of the limbs and flowing drapery. In their designs for dresses the artists of Ukiyo-ye emphasized the theorem that art is the love of certain balanced relations and proportions, for they planned dresses in which every separate part is welded into one harmonious whole. ”

“ Inspiration must be sought by other than mechanical means. Have not the most inspired revelations of colour come to the great master, William Keith, when, invoking the aid of his old temple bell, its lingering vibrations yielded to him rich secrets of colour harmony, as the song of the bell revealed to the soul of Schiller the mystery of life and birth and death, which he crystallized in his immortal poem? ”

“ The splendour of this beatific vision has never faded, for the masters who followed in the footsteps of the inspired monk reverently preserved the secret of these precious shades, till at last, in the form of the Ukiyo-ye print, they were sown broadcast, and revolutionized the colour sense of the art world.
It has been remarked that Japanese Art of the nineteenth century is often nothing but a reproduction of the works of the ancient great masters, and the methods and mannerisms of the fifteenth century artists have ever served as examples for later students. ”

“ The influence of Kiyonaga pervades his most beautiful work; but later, under a life of constant self-indulgence, amongst associations all tending to demoralization, his genius suffered an eclipse. His loss of self-control affected his art, until the sweeping lines and noble contours which his brush had acquired in the atelier of Kiyonaga were lost or widely travestied into a “delirium of female tallness.” ”

“ The women of Kiyonaga have a more than human dignity and grace, the classic folds of his drapery recalling figures of the Renaissance. The Japanese artist always has an underlying motive in the disposition of his drapery. ”

“ The Japanese woman, with her untrammelled form arrayed in draperies designed by consummate artists, may dare to follow classic Kiyonaga—youth and grace may acquire oriental plasticity. But let fashion rest there. Pitiful and ludicrously futile is the effort of embonpoint to attain sinuosity. ”