Woldemar von Seidlitz

“ As Shigenaga and Toyonobu entered upon the inheritance of Masanobu, so did Kiyomitsu carry on the traditions of the Torii, followed meantime, from 1750 to 1765, like a shadow by Kiyohiro. Kiyomitsu's draughtsmanship is broad, but not always as delicately worked out as that of the ancients. He is noted for the exceptional grace, fulness, and finish of his compositions; his figures are generally long, with small heads and small features; the ample draperies cling close to the bodies.
Like Shigenaga, he cultivated the three-colour print as early as the fifties ”

“ The right moment had now come for Shunsho with his numerous school, for Kiyonaga and for Utamaro, who in the closing third of the eighteenth century brought Japanese wood-engraving to its full development. Hokusai, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, was the last of the great artists of this line. Out of the multitude of the artists who follow, still for the most part admirably trained but lacking in dignity and precision, Hiroshige, with his subtly subjective landscapes, alone stands out conspicuously. ”

“ He was a pupil of Ishikawa Kogen. But whereas Shunsho aimed at violent motion and robust colour in his actor representations, and therefore often became angular and hard, though always impressive, Buncho strove to achieve a soft flow of line and delicate colouring, to which his favourite subject, actors in women's parts, was more especially adapted. His sheets are perhaps the most delicate and gracious of all Japanese art and are distinguished both by exceptional sharpness and fineness of drawing, and by a harmony and elegance of colour grouping which can scarcely be surpassed. ”

“ During the time that Shunsho turned to the neglected field of actor representation and cultivated it in a new style notable for its charm of colour effect, Kiyonaga was collecting his strength while following this new movement with intelligent sympathy. Then he suddenly appears as the fully matured artist, who, thanks to his inherited loftiness of aim and nobility of taste, found it easy to surpass these meritorious yet more or less superficial innovators, to put them aside without an effort, and himself, as it were unintentionally, in their place. ”

“ The women are represented in the most various occupations. One is painting, another composing poems, a third preparing tea; others again are arranging flowers, smoking out of little silver pipes, playing with a mouse; still others at their toilet, colouring their lips, removing hairs from their faces with a strigil, tying their girdles—at the back when an honourable woman, in front when a courtesan—while sometimes holding with their chins a book in which they have just been reading. The artist is in particular inexhaustible in the depiction of the joys of motherhood. ”

“ Nevertheless we must not forget that within this domain of the hyper-æsthetic, Utamaro was the creator of a most original and individual style. Nay, if we could only admit the morbid and exaggerated to be as fit subject-matter for art as the healthy and sane, we must grant that this style is one of altogether enchanting originality, and that, however dangerous might be its immediate influence upon the spectator and particularly upon possible successors, it does none the less lift us beyond the cramping limits of reality and is therefore not wanting in idealism of a kind. ”

“ For a reduced specimen, see Anderson, Japanese Wood-Engraving, No. 6. Although the spirit of a new era of lax morality now first intrudes on these pictures, in the shape of easy beauties and celebrities of the stage, yet the artists never drop into vulgarity, but always preserve the forms of the highest propriety and good breeding. It is only in the crowded and lively street scenes, which Moronobu loved to draw on large oblong sheets, that he yields, always within the bounds of art, to a spirit of frolic which is absolutely enchanting. He never poses, but always remains simple and natural. ”

“ The artist conveys it to the paper, not by means of a pen or pencil as in Europe, but by means of a brush, either in outlines of the utmost delicacy and precision, to be filled in with colour where needed, or else in broad masses which receive no further contour, but on the contrary are the embodiment of the greatest imaginable freedom of artistic touch. ”

“ We miss the flashes of robust sensuousness that distinguish Moronobu, a more feminine and more elegiac temper discloses itself; but it is just this inclination toward delicacy that prepares the way for the subsequent development of Japanese wood-engraving. In a series of fifteen double sheets of mythological scenes, a varied picture of the life of the times is unfolded before us—boating parties, mandoline concerts, love scenes, the landscape scarcely indicated yet admirably suggestive. ”

“ As in so many other branches of the history of art, so also in the art of Japan, a theory is beginning to make headway to the effect that its heroic age was not merely a time of preparation, but rather the actual high-water mark of the whole movement, and that all subsequent to it constituted only the development of the original germs, without adding anything essentially new, without even attaining the power of those first periods. In a history of the Japanese woodcut, accordingly, the chief centre of interest is the development of the eighteenth century ”

“ While, therefore, all subsequent endeavours lead only to this result, that after many and various attempts to bring beauty into harmony with truth, the flower of art blossoms for a brief season, to be followed immediately by decay, the "primitives," on the other hand, keep on their way unconcerned about the solution of such difficult problems, and unfold the powers that are in them in all their freshness, taking care only to infuse as much life as possible into their creations and to give them as much finish as is necessary to produce a harmonious artistic impression. ”

“ The Polychrome Print.—Without doubt, we owe to the amiable and cheerful genius of Harunobu the invention of prints entirely unlimited in the number of blocks and choice of colours. As, twenty-two years earlier, Shigenaga had dated the first two-colour print, so also Harunobu placed the date 1765 on several of his delicate and richly coloured prints, square and of medium size approximating to that of the later surimonos, evidently intending thereby, in just exultation over the final success of his invention, to fix its date for all succeeding ages. ”

“ An infinite abundance of observation is stored up in these sketches, but comparatively little has been done towards co-ordinating it. However much fresh suggestion they might offer to Europeans, the art of Japan, which seeks to progress only through strength and individuality of style, could draw from it but little inspiration. But the tireless ingenuity, the inexhaustible creative power, and the imperturbable good humour of the artist constantly arouses our admiration anew. ”

“ Suzuki Harunobu, the founder of the Japanese wood print in the style familiar to us, and thus the first of the moderns, was a pupil of that Shigenaga who invented the two-colour print and probably also the three-colour print, and who, after Masanobu's death, upheld his heritage through a decade. In this case, the inheritance of the artistic tradition, and its gradual transformation in the direction of an entirely new ideal, is clearly in evidence. ”

“ The development of the European poster, which would be quite unthinkable without Japanese influence, is only the first step towards a renewal of European painting in all its branches, and especially of monumental painting. The solution after which we are reaching has been forming there for centuries. And, whatever the difference of circumstances, requirements, and race, the fact remains that Japanese art is far closer to us than the art of our own past, with which, however much we may admire its productions, we are completely out of touch. ”

“ In these qualities lay predisposed the elements which Europe, during centuries of development along realistic lines, had almost entirely lost sight of. Only a return to the fresh and ever vivid hues of Nature could rescue us from the drab monotony of factitious monochrome; only a resumption of consciously decorative aims in design could rescue us from a method of figure-drawing whose results had as little distinction or individuality as a photographer's pose. ”

“ The conscious striving after beauty and symmetry detracts somewhat from the freshness of immediate observation, and deprives it of some part of its force; while, on the other hand, the attempt to imitate nature exactly draws the artist away from the true goal of art, for it leads him only too easily to forget that he is the creator, and not the copyist of nature. ”

“ After the landscape with the hundred bridges, a very large sheet of 1823, there appeared until 1829 the celebrated Thirty-six Views of Fuji, the volcano, 3729 metres high, which lies to the west of Yedo, and which may be regarded as a landmark of the country. In this set, which was printed mainly in blue, green, and brown, and gradually increased to forty-six sheets, of medium size and oblong form, he exhibited the mighty mountain now near, now afar, in the reflection of varying hours and seasons. The ever-changing foreground, which differs in each print, in itself awakens our interest ”

“ This estimate of painting as the peer of calligraphy explains not only the decorative character of Japanese art, the strict formalism of its style, the great importance which it attaches to the balance of light and dark masses, the subordination of colour to purely decorative ends, but also the wonderful freedom which Japanese art has always managed to retain in spite of its tendency to formalism. ”

“ Of Kiyonaga it is really true to say what many collectors seek to persuade themselves of in respect to such fragments in general, that his sheets have been so composed in the beginning that, according to choice or necessity, they may be used singly, or in pairs, or as triptychs; although, as a rule, the full effect intended by the artist is only attained in the complete composition. The colour strives as little as the drawing for independent effect in Kiyonaga's work, for it too aims only at giving clear and graceful expression to the object ”

“ To this day the traveller returning from Japan is full of enthusiasm for the beauty of the landscape, the mildness of the climate—in the temperate tracts round Yedo there is scarcely a month of snow and ice—the skill and industry of the men, the charm and modesty of the women. ”

“ Yeishi, as well as Utamaro, introduced a new element into this art of the people, as they both proceeded from the aristocratic Kano school which had been trained on Chinese models. In the place of the charming daintiness with which Harunobu, the heir of the primitives, endowed his women, and the healthy fulness that distinguished Kiyonaga's simple figures, we now meet with a refinement in stature, carriage, and expression which bears witness to a general change in manners and increased demands on life, resulting in a modification of the ideal of beauty. ”

“ A youthful, amiable disposition distinguishes this renewer of Japanese wood-engraving, and leads him to choose the life of youth, fair women, and lovers as his favourite subjects; actor-prints he produced but seldom, and, as it would seem, only in his earliest years.
If the works of the primitives, with whom background, as such, had no existence, can justly be compared with mosaic (Fenollosa) , Harunobu may be said to have created space for his compositions by imparting depth to them through the addition of a background. ”

“ Scenes from history and legend, and also numerous representations from contemporary life, alternate with one another—a faithful mirror of the occupations of high society, its combats and love adventures, its games, pastimes, and pleasures, even its fashions in dress and coiffure. ”

“ Therefore, we are not to regard as its highest achievements those products of wood-engraving which most resemble European art, which challenge comparison with European productions, and hence are easiest for us to understand, but those which by virtue of their calligraphic and decorative character approach most nearly to the Japanese ideal of artistic greatness, dignity, and elegance, and at the same time attest the greatest individuality and creative power. ”

“ Toyokuni was the son of Kurabashi Gorobei, a Buddhist image-carver in Yedo; he first studied the style of Hanabusa Itcho and Giokusan, but went over to Toyoharu and formed his name by taking part of that of the old Toyonobu, as Fenollosa assumes. [11] Unlike Yeishi and Utamaro, therefore, he had no need to familiarise himself with the popular style, but was from the start educated in a conception not over far removed from that of the still dominant Kiyonaga. Toyokuni was without doubt Toyoharu's greatest pupil. He understood how to dispose his mostly very quiet figures in graceful groupings ”