Chapter VI: The Fourth Period: the Decadence (2)

To call Sharaku a realist is a silly, untruthful attempt to muffle in words forces that one does not understand. He was hardly more a realist than Kiyonaga. He saw in the spectacle before him certain elements of beauty and terror; he selected and moulded them into his cunningly devised designs; and the result was as much a creation of the visionary mind--a true idealism--as the pictures of the fairy-tale-telling Harunobu. It is no mere realism, but an insidious dissection and a mordant reconstruction, that is so striking in these works. The most savage efforts of modern caricature are child's play beside Sharaku's disintegrating analysis and his satanic reassembling of features. He does to the face and its concealed passions what Michael Angelo's anatomical figure does to the nerves and muscles--revealing appallingly the secrets of structure and the machinery of power.

Yet, in spite of all the distortions and exaggerations and displacements, Sharaku's satyrical faces live. They have an unnatural and monstrous life--like the life of Gothic gargoyles and fabulous animals, whose parts are brought together into an incredible yet organic creation. Looking upon them, one realizes that for Sharaku beauty meant not sweetness or grace, but vitality--the clench and rending of the earthquake forces of life. He sought no harmonies of sentiment like those of Harunobu; he plunged wholly into a maelstrom of powers whose magnificent surge and flow was to him the sole end and the sole consolation.

He drew no courtesans, no scenes from the daily life of the people, no festivals, no tea-house gardens by the river; but with a baleful concentration he, the proud master of the esoteric Nō drama, kept his eyes fixed unswervingly upon the pathetic mimes of the vulgar stage--outcasts, common lumps strutting for an hour of glory in gorgeous robes and heroic rôles before a gaping populace. How one longs for one more work from Sharaku's hands--a portrait of himself, seated in the stalls, watching the play at its height! One can almost imagine the peering eyes, the tight lips, the hidden hands....

So far I have spoken chiefly of the large heads of Sharaku. But it must not be forgotten that he produced a number of designs in _hoso-ye_ form that are the very flower of his work. Kurth places certain of these early in Sharaku's career; he is, perhaps, wrong in this, for many of those which he thus dates give evidence of an art so mature and masterful that they must be at least contemporaneous with the Ronin Series. Such are the print of Arashi Ryūzō as an aged noble in robe of black with violet girdle, and the print of Segawa Kikusabrō in robe of olive and purple holding an open fan. In the finest of these _hoso-ye_ the dramatic force of the composition is so subtle that the element of caricature takes a subordinate place. A lyric mood pervades them. It is impossible to contemplate these figures without a sense, not merely of the irony and contempt which they sometimes embody, but also of the tragic heights on which they move. Lofty conflicts, desperate destinies, immense strainings toward desired goals, immense despairs before impassable barriers--these are some of the emotions that confront us here. The echo of the tragedy of the Greeks is around them; their gestures seem the shadows of titanic cataclysms. Kiyonaga gave us the gods; Sharaku gives us those who fought against the gods. If it were my fortune to choose, out of the tens of thousands of prints that I have seen, one print which could alone be saved from some impending universal destruction, I am not sure whether I would take Harunobu's flawless "Flute Player," or Kiyonaga's serene "Terrace by the Sea," or that terrible print of Sharaku's, illustrated in both Kurth and the catalogue of the exhibition at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, in which the orange-robed figure of Nakayama Tomisabrō stalks by with an intensity of passion that makes one's flesh creep--a vibrancy of line, colour, and emotion that seems the apogee of beauty and terror.

Silver background. Size 14 × 10. Signed _Toshiusai Sharaku ga_. Ainsworth Collection.

_Plate 44._]

The _hoso-ye_ prints have, upon the whole, more poise and serenity than the busts; and they will perhaps be judged--in a hundred years, when the excitement of the discovery of Sharaku is over--to be among his greatest works. When they occur in triptychs, as probably all were originally designed to do, they constitute more harmonious and dramatic units than any of Shunsho's actor-triptychs. The finest, and latest in order of production, are generally those without background; in these, isolated and sublime against an empty universe of yellow tint, rise the supreme evocations of Sharaku's genius.

Great distinction of composition marks all of Sharaku's work. Both the _hoso-ye_ and the large bust-portraits are drawn with classic simplicity of lines and masses. Nothing short of certain of the Primitives can approach them. Every superfluous ornament is omitted; as in Plate 43, each line is cut down to its meagrest possible limit. But the expressiveness of the drawing is unsurpassable; and the æsthetic effect of the direct composition grows with every repeated sight. These strange heads against the dark glimmering backgrounds seem Titans rooted in the void; they loom upon one's vision enormously; they are overwhelming with the spiritual greatness of their creator. In spite of all the disturbing unquietness of their conflicts, they are charged with a monumental equilibrium of design, sealed with an exalted peace of conception, poised as for eternity with the repose of measureless space and time around them. At first sight, one would imagine these portraits to be impossibly restless things to live with; but greater familiarity proves them to be like the Sibyls of the Sistine Chapel--vast and enduring figures, whose large passion does not obliterate the fundamental tranquillity of their conception.

The colour which Sharaku employs is of a unique quality: sombre, with lurid lights; heavy and opaque; nightmare colours, leashed into miraculous and incredible harmony; things of infernal and dusky splendour; "tragic colours," Kurth calls them. The dark mica backgrounds, which Sharaku is said, without much proof, to have invented, heighten to a remarkable degree his colour effects. Words and reproductions are alike powerless to convey any sense of them; they hold in store an impressive sensation for him who has not yet seen them. With them Sharaku takes first rank as a colourist.

Toward the end of his brief career, his portraits became almost too terrible in their savage and tragic irony. In the large double-portraits Sharaku tears the mask of humanity aside and shows the very beast. Yet to call even these most extreme of his productions caricatures is to obscure a subtle spiritual essence by a crude word. They are exactly as comic as the ravings of Lear, as mirth-provoking as the laments of Shylock. They are not the light mocking of a scoffer or a comedian, but the appalling and tortured sneer of a man whose vision of men is coloured by his desire for the gods.

"Because he did not represent reality, but on the contrary painted unnatural figures, the public became hostile toward him."... "His figures were too realistic."... "He was a bungler in art."... From these conflicting criticisms, found in various Japanese authorities, we may gather with what comprehension the public of that day accepted the final work of the great painter; and we may conjecture what neglect and hatred forced him into a never-broken retirement.

Dr. Kurth is of the opinion that, after the year 1795, Sharaku still continued to produce secretly a few prints under the assumed name of Kabukidō Yenkyō, and attempted under this disguise to win back the popularity of his prime. This is an alluring but somewhat fantastic theory, which neither the documentary nor the internal evidence of Yenkyō's work adequately supports. Other authorities believe Yenkyō to have been an independent artist who was a pupil of Sharaku. His work strangely resembles that of Kunimasa I. At the present time it cannot be said that the question is wholly settled; but it would be rash to accept Kurth's theory at its face value.

In conclusion, let us grant that Sharaku is not for every one. One cannot quarrel with a person who says, "I understand Sharaku; I see the measureless depths of his tragic irony, the unique splendour of his colour, the perfect mastery of his composition. But I do not like him. I prefer Kiyonaga, just as I prefer the stately beauty of Keats to the troubled profundity of Blake." Such a position is comprehensible and impregnable. But he who finds Sharaku merely grotesque or absurd or repellent should return to the portraits for further study; he has not yet reached the immortal heart of Sharaku's work, and he is missing a memorable experience.

Exact comparisons are profitless; but most students of Japanese prints have at certain times turned from the work of Sharaku with the deep conviction that this man was the greatest genius of them all.

Sharaku's output was not large, and his work is now of the utmost rarity. The Parisian collectors long ago recognized Sharaku's greatness, and at a time when Fenollosa was proclaiming Sharaku as an "arch-purveyor of vulgarities," and Strange was grudgingly describing him in seven lines as an artist "of great power but little grace," the collectors of Paris had already acquired such Sharaku treasures as are now a lavish and deserved reward for their foresight. Perhaps the only collection of Sharaku prints that can rival those of Paris is the notable Spaulding Collection of Boston, which takes high rank.

CHOKI.

_A Silver Print._

The sky, a plate of darkened steel,
Weighs on the far rim of the sea,
Save where the lifted glooms reveal
The last edge of the sun burned free.
Blood-red, it drops departingly.

And in the nightmare or the hour,
Against the terrible sea and sky,
A woman's figure--a strange flower--
Lingers. Her wearied, curious eye
Watches the burning world go by.

Though Choki is probably not to be counted as one of the few supremely great artists of the Ukioye School, his fame has been steadily increasing during the last twenty years; and whereas he once held an insignificant place in the esteem of amateurs, he has of late been regarded with an interest and admiration that at times seem almost more than his deserts. Mr. Strange calls him the most graceful of all the figure-designers of his time, and Kurth does not hesitate to deal with him as "mit einem Riesengroszen." I note in Kurth a tendency to exalt an artist because of his proficiency in technical processes, to an extent that I cannot assent to; Choki was superb, but hardly Titanic. It would be difficult to characterize him more justly than in the words of M. Koechlin, "Le plus curieux des petits maîtres." This description certainly does not err on the side of over-enthusiasm; perhaps these are rather lukewarm words to apply to a grace so exquisite, a precision so sharp, and a spiritual appeal so strangely alluring as that of Choki.

Absolutely nothing is known of Yeishōsai Choki's life; it is believed that he was a pupil of Sekiyen, who also taught Utamaro. The Japanese authorities are inexplicably silent about him. Internal evidence, however, tells us that his work lies between the years 1785 and 1805. His earliest designs are strongly after the manner of Kiyonaga, whose feminine types he at first adopted almost literally. These he modified somewhat a little later when he came under the influence of Yeishi, whose slender and delicate figures led him away from the robust ones of Kiyonaga. One of Choki's pillar-prints, illustrated in Plate 45, marks an interesting transition stage. The face and figure seem at first sight almost purely of the Kiyonaga variety, but on closer examination differences appear; and most striking of all is the fact that the colour-scheme is that peculiar combination of yellow, grey, violet, blue, and black which was distinctive of some of Yeishi's finest work. The influence of Sharaku on Choki was at some time very strong, though the precise date is almost impossible to determine. So great was Choki's admiration for this master that later, when he had arrived at his own distinctive manner, he produced a pillar-print of a girl holding a fan on which appears Sharaku's famous design of "The Man with the Pipe." But Choki followed no one else as badly as he did Sharaku; though he appears to have learned things that were of great value to him later, his immediate imitations of the great ironist reduced the superb effects of the latter to the level of caricatures and dissipated the effect of concentrated force which marks his work. Utamaro proved a more congenial influence; and in Choki's earlier prints there are many traces of the grace, though not of the versatility, of that artist.

Size 26 × 4½. Signed _Choki ga_.

SHUNMAN: TWO LADIES UNDER A MAPLE-TREE.

Size 24 × 5. Signed _Kubo Shunman ga_.

_Plate 45._]

About 1790 there came out of this series of imitations a curious blended type, which finally became Choki's distinctive own. This type is a composite of Kiyonaga, Yeishi, and Sharaku, but ultimately unlike any of them in its effect. The lower part of the face is prominent; the neck is elongated and wonderfully delicate; about the eyes there is a narrowing that is unusual. These figures of Choki's are distinguished by a precision in drawing so sharp as to be almost an affectation, and by a grace half of whose unique fascination is produced by some strangeness of gesture, some keenness of characterization, or some unusual angle of vision. Few examples of Choki's work in this manner survive; but they are sufficient to lift his reputation from that of a copyist to that of a notable creator of women's portraits. Woman was his great theme. "Er hat ihrem Liebreiz das Hohelied der Japanischen Malerei überhaupt gesungen," says Kurth, in a burst of enthusiasm for these subtle designs. His most striking works in this manner, and perhaps the greatest of all his works, are undoubtedly his half-length figures on mica or silver backgrounds. Of the fascination of these rare prints it is impossible to gain any idea from a reproduction. They rise into the world of the miraculous; they are pure incantations. Such sheets as the famous "Fireflies," or the two women smoking by the river, or the falling-snow scene, or the sunset by the sea, have a beauty as unique as it is haunting. The colours, dull in tone, produce against the metallic sheen of the silver backgrounds unparalleled arrangements that are positively disturbing in their super-refinement.

Choki's blue and silver and red tones seem to pass over into a region where dwell things inexpressible by ordinary pigments. The most sophisticated amateur shivers before some of these colour-harmonies. Choki's characteristic prints are never restful, but always exciting and vibrant; they are dominated by some hidden instability of equilibrium that reacts on one's nerves like a drug. Their beauty has a certain madness in it, or at least a note of strain and disquietude. Thus in the end, for all his imitative efforts, Choki stands, as did Sharaku, in solitary isolation and impenetrable mystery.

Size 24 × 4½. Signed _Shiko, hitsu_.

CHOKI: A GEISHA AND HER SERVANT CARRYING LUTE-BOX.

Size 24 × 5. Signed _Shiko, hitsu_.

_Plate 46._]

For reasons unknown to us, Choki late in his activity changed his signature to Shiko and produced under this name a small number of prints regarding the quality of which opinions differ. They are all in the manner of Utamaro's later style, and so little resemble the work signed "Choki" that one has to use a distinct effort to restrain one's incredulity, in the face of pretty clear evidence that the two names were used by a single artist. Easily first among these prints are a few splendid pillar-prints; one of these, the two singers with the black box, illustrated in Plate 46, seems to me almost the finest pillar-print post-dating 1795 that I have ever seen. Of this form Choki was a consummate master. But M. Koechlin regards these Shiko prints as mere imitations of Utamaro's period of decadence, and rejoices in the fact that they are so rare. Mr. Arthur Morrison, on the other hand, who points out correctly that Shiko is Choki's late, not his early name (a matter on which most writers have inexplicably gone astray) feels that the Shiko sheets are, in the best instances, of more elegance and distinction than anything produced under the Choki signature. I should hardly like to agree with either view, but am content to put the Shiko pillar-prints and the Choki silver-prints side by side, and regard them as the supreme examples of the double talent of this puzzling genius.

All of Choki's work is of great rarity; that signed Shiko is possibly even rarer than that signed Choki. Rarest and most highly treasured of all are his silver-prints; the ordinary collector will probably never have an opportunity to obtain one.

NAGAHIDE II and ICHIRAKUSAI NAGAMATSU (CHŌSHŌ) may be mentioned as followers of Choki. The fact that we do not know of more disciples of so brilliant a designer is another one of the inexplicable things that surround him.

TOYOKUNI.

_The Pupil of Toyokuni._

I walk the crowded Yedo streets,
And everywhere one question greets
My passing, as the strollers say--
"How goes the Master's work to-day?
We saw him sketching hard last night
At Ryogoku, where the bright
Trails of the rockets lit the air.
You should have seen the ladies there!
All the most famous of the town
In gorgeous robes walked up and down
The long bridge-span, well-knowing he
Was there to draw them gorgeously.
I'm sure he'll give us something fine--
Dark splendid figures, lights ashine,
A great procession of our best
And costliest Oiran, with the West
Burning behind them. When it's done,
Pray, of the copies, save me one."

Yes, I am pupil to the great.
How well he bears his famous state!
With what superbness he fulfills
The multitude's delighted wills,
Giving them, at their eager call,
Each play and feast and festival
Drawn with a rich magnificence:
And they come flocking with their pence
To buy his sheets whose supple power
Captures the plaudits of the hour--
Till even Utamaro's eyes
Turn, kindled with swift jealousies.

Strange! that before this crowded shrine
One voice is lacking, and that mine--
I, learner in his lordly house--
I, on whose cold, unwilling brows
The lights of his strong glory burn,
Blinding my heart that needs must yearn
Far from the measure of his state--
I, liegeman to another fate.
Would that some blindness came on me
That I might cease one hour to see,
For all his high, ambitious will,
His is a peasant's nature still....
What utter madness that my thought
Weighs him--I who am less than naught!
Where he walks boldly, there I creep.
Where his assured long brush-strokes sweep
Unhesitant, there I falter, strain
With agony--perhaps in vain--
For some more subtly curving line,
Some musical poising of design
That shall at last, at last express
My frailer glimpse of loveliness.
And yet, for all his facile art,
I hug my impotence to my heart.
For there are things his marching mind
In steady labours day by day
With all its sight shall never find,
With all its craft can never say.
There are lights along the dusky street
That his bold eyes have never caught;
There are tones more luminous, more sweet
Than any that his hopes have sought.
There are torturing lines that curve and fall
Like dying echoes musical,
Or twine and lave and bend and roll,
In labyrinths to lure my soul.
His ladies sumptuous and rare
Move princess-like in proud design
Of glowing loveliness: but where
His bannered pomps and pageants shine,
I feel a stiller, rarer peace,
A cadence breathless, slender, lone.
And where his facile brush-strokes cease
Begins the realm that is my own.

I wander lonely by fields and streams.
I lie in wait for lingering dreams
That brood, a tender-lighted haze
Down the wide space of ending days--
A secret thrill that hovering flies
Round some tall form, some wistful eyes,
Some thin branch where the Spring is green--
A whisper heard, a light half-seen
By lonely wanderers abroad
In crowded streets or solitude
Of hills--to haunt with dim unrest
The empty chambers of the breast.

Perhaps some day a heart shall come,
Like me half-blind, like me half-dumb,
Like me contentless with the clear
Sunlighted beauties men hold dear.
Perhaps he will more greatly prize
My faltered whispers from afar
Than all the Master's pageantries
And confident pomp and press and jar.
Yet, well or ill, how shall I change
The measure doled, the nature given?
Mine is the thirst for far and strange
Echoes of a forgotten heaven.
I listen for the ghosts of sound;
Remote, I watch life's eager stream;
Through wastes afar, through gulfs profound,
I, Toyohiro, seek my dream.

Utagawa Toyokuni was born in 1768, and early began his apprenticeship as a pupil of Toyoharu. From this master he learned the rules of European perspective--a device which he soon abandoned for the true Japanese convention. He may have studied under Shunyei for a short time. Though he was later to become a fertile producer of actor-prints, he inaugurated his work with the figures of women. His first works imitate the type of face and figure made famous by Shunsho's and Shigemasa's book, "Mirror of the Beautiful Women of the Yoshiwara." Before 1790 he gave up this type for one copied from Kiyonaga, who was at this time at the height of his fame. But Toyokuni was no such draughtsman as Kiyonaga, and his figures in this manner are generally poorly drawn and awkward. At this time he frequently adopted colour-schemes from Shunman. After Kiyonaga's retirement Toyokuni began to use the delicate type made popular by the rising genius of Choki; but after a short interval he went over to Utamaro, who was then coming into supreme mastery.

Up to 1791, therefore (according to Friedrich Succo, "Toyokuni und Seine Zeit," München, 1913), Toyokuni was exclusively a painter of women. But when in the early nineties the colossal Sharaku brought out his revolutionary actor-portraits, Toyokuni abandoned his old field and adopted, to the extent that a smaller man could, the themes and eventually the manner of this great genius. At first Sharaku appears to have been an awakener rather than a guide to Toyokuni; for we find that it was to Shunsho's style that Toyokuni first looked for a model. But when Sharaku's great series of the Ronin bust-portraits appeared, Toyokuni at once responded to them as the strongest influence of his whole life and produced a number of similar portraits in a manner that captures all the eccentricities but little of the strength or insight of Sharaku. A more successful series, also definitely inspired by Sharaku's Ronin busts, was a set of full-length Ronin figures which Toyokuni then brought out. These tall monumental designs, with striking masses of black and deep colour against grey or mica backgrounds, are perhaps the finest actors in the whole long list of this artist's work. Though they never surpass Shunsho's or Sharaku's supreme creations, they are powerful conceptions, and constitute some basis for the claim of Toyokuni's admirers that he was the third-greatest of the actor-painters.

When, about 1794, Sharaku's career came to a sudden and tragic close, Toyokuni turned back from actors to women. Once more he followed Utamaro in the selection of his type, and with greater success than heretofore. To this period belongs the really splendid triptych, "The Journey of Narahira," representing a man on horseback and six attendants, admirably spaced, at the foot of Fuji. In this period also must be placed the series of pillar-prints of unusual width and shortness, very richly printed, representing courtesans and actors together. The print of this series which shows Ichikawa Kōmazō pushing back a reed blind to surprise a half-clothed courtesan is a very fine work. These, and other productions of this time, justify us in calling this decade the best period of Toyokuni's activity.

Right-hand sheet of a triptych. Size 15 × 10. Signed _Toyokuni ga_. Metzgar Collection.

_Plate 47._]

But before 1800 Toyokuni had followed Utamaro in that artist's adoption of the thin necks, enormous coiffures, and distorted bodies which not even Utamaro was always able to handle beautifully. Toyokuni's success was far inferior. The over-ripeness of the type required all Utamaro's subtlety to make it attractive or significant; and Toyokuni was by no means subtle. Therefore it was no loss when he returned to actor-prints shortly thereafter. One print of this, his second actor-period--the savage portrait of Matsumoto Kōshirō, reproduced by Succo--is notable and fine. But on the whole his second period shows Toyokuni as only slightly more original than in the Sharaku period. In his portraits of women at this time he sometimes leaned a little toward the Yeishi type, with Yeishi's stiffness but without his distinction. Many books, from these as well as from other years, bear witness to his industry; he was a veritable geyser of prints of every sort.

In 1804 Toyokuni was obscurely involved in trouble with the authorities over some of his historical prints. This was the time when Utamaro also suffered at their hands. In 1806 Utamaro died; and Toyokuni, who had so long leaned on the greater painter for his stimulus and inspiration, went to pieces like a house of cards. Without a rival to emulate, he was nothing; and we see him, a tragic figure--indisputably the most famous master then living, who had survived the great days when he had competed with Kiyonaga, Yeishi, and Utamaro for popular favour--now alone in a glory which he could not sustain--a master bereft of those conditions which had once enabled him to produce almost-masterpieces.

From this time on his work steadily deteriorated. The raw and over-complicated colours of his designs of women made a melancholy contrast to the "Narahira" triptych. He abandoned woman-portraiture about 1810. His actors continued--a mere outworn formula--awkward, angular creations, with senselessly crossed eyes, twisted necks, wry mouths--the veriest parody on those devices which had once been employed by Sharaku for a sublime end. Toyokuni died in 1825, a man who had outlived himself.

Toyokuni's production had been enormous. The contemporaneous popularity indicated by this is hard to understand unless we remember his frequent shiftings of style and realize that at every moment he was ready to throw off his old manner and adopt that of whatever artist most strongly appealed to the taste of the hour. He was the most imitative of all artists. What the mob wanted he gave them unreservedly, losing his own integrity thereby.

Toyokuni seems to have been without real individuality or individual view-point. He was devoid of either illusions or insight; and the true artist must have the one or the other passionately. He drew his women without enthusiasm and without tenderness. He conceived his actors without the white-heat of real artistic creation. There is something rasping about the greater part of his work; it seems full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. It is rhetoric, not the profound and tragic poetry of Sharaku, nor the subtle and decadent lyric strain of Utamaro. Rarely did he make an authentic attempt to capture the beauty or wonder or terror of life as he himself saw it. It is always the vision of other men that he is reporting, not his own. He had no vision.

So long as he could attach himself to some productive master, catching that master's feeling and style to a certain extent, he produced creditable works. But when the support was withdrawn he seemed powerless to take another step along that road. Kiyonaga's retirement, Sharaku's downfall, Utamaro's death--each in turn cut short Toyokuni's prosperous career in the footsteps of these masters. When left to himself he had only one thing to revert to--the typical Toyokuni actor at its worst, a thing of common ugliness.

No fame has tarnished more than his with the passing of time. As Sharaku's has brightened, his has dimmed. Once he was esteemed the greatest living print-designer; now I find that many students feel a sense of surprise when occasionally, out of the thousands of Toyokuni's prints, one appears that is really distinguished.

It must, however, be admitted that at certain times Toyokuni's native brilliancy enabled him to create prints that are not surpassed by any of his contemporaries. He did more poor work than any other artist of his time; but such triptychs as the "Ryogoku Fireworks," in the Kiyonaga manner, the "Bath House," in which shadows appear on the wall, the "Fan Shop," and the "Ladies and Cherry-blossoms in the Wind," are beyond criticism.

The best Toyokuni prints are very rare; the common ones are to be found plentifully in every print-shop. His few finest triptychs, such as the "Narahira," or the "Ladies and Cherry-blossoms in the Wind," of which one sheet appears in Plate 47, are among the collector's important treasures.

The beginner should be warned that there were, in all, at least five men who at various times bore the name Toyokuni. No one of the successors of the first Toyokuni ever produced work comparable with the finest work of Toyokuni I; but it is a matter of great difficulty, not yet by any means wholly clear, to distinguish between the late inferior work of Toyokuni I and the work of several of the succeeding Toyokunis. One simple indication may be of service to the inexperienced collector: If the Toyokuni signature is in a red oval or cartouch, it is not by the first master. This statement cannot, however, be reversed, for the later Toyokunis often signed without the cartouch.

TOYOHIRO.

_A Group of Ladies._

O careless passer--O look deep!
These forms from near the sea of sleep
Come hither; on each forehead gleams
The phosphorescent spray of dreams.
They have sailed in from lonely seas
Cloaked in a haze of mysteries;
And hither by a lord are led
Who snared them, pale himself with dread,
Upon the very shores of sleep.
O careless passer-by, look deep!

Utagawa Toyohiro, sometimes also called Ichiriusai, was born in 1773; he was a brother, fellow-student, and probably pupil of Toyokuni. It is well known that about 1800 these two artists collaborated to some extent. Toyohiro's own chief work--landscapes, book-illustrations not unlike Hokusai's, and figures of women--was done between 1795 and 1820; he died in the year 1828.

Fate has been unkind to him in associating him with a man tremendously more productive and incomparably more popular in his own day than himself. Even to the present time, the reputation of Toyokuni still overshadows that of his brother. But the close student of Toyohiro's work will probably come to the conclusion that this present difference in fame is due less to difference in merit than to the fact that Toyokuni was enormously prolific, while Toyohiro's work was scanty. The contemporaneous popularity may be ascribed to the ability of Toyokuni to shift and veer with every change in the public taste, while Toyohiro was unable or unwilling to move with these fluctuating winds. It is reported that a serious breach occurred between the brothers because of Toyohiro's refusal to produce actor-prints as the popular taste demanded. His work is, however, coming to be recognized as of a quality at least equal to his brother's, and in some respects finer and more truly the expression of a rare sense of beauty.

We may conjecture that Toyohiro inherited two things from his first teacher Toyoharu. One was a leaning toward landscape drawing. The other was a certain distinction and shy aloofness that marked the older master.

All Toyohiro's work has an aristocratic touch, a fine subtlety of curve and colour, that contrast markedly with the frequently blaring compositions of Toyokuni. He seldom drew actors or courtesans; most of his figures are ladies of birth and breeding. The beautiful spots of black which are important elements in the majority of his compositions are handled with a keen sense of contrast that not even Kiyonaga's surpassed. His brushwork is firm and delicate, but not so sparkling with vitality as that of some of his predecessors. His colours are soft, his figures wonderfully graceful; the impression he produces upon one is that of a subtle and beauty-hungry spirit, detached from the mob by a refinement beyond their comprehension, driven on by a consuming passion, devoted to the quest of a perfection he was able to project but not to realize.

In style, he draws considerably upon Toyokuni's early Utamaro manner; but in spirit he is nearer to Yeishi and Utamaro himself, both of whom must have influenced him somewhat. Not even the work of Yeishi is so saturated with the wistfulness for beauty, the sense of vanishing loveliness, the homesickness for regions of otherwhere. One of his triptychs, the "Daimyo's Kite Party," reproduced in Plate 48, so embodies these qualities that it is worthy of special attention.

Triptych. Each sheet size 15 × 10. Signed _Toyohiro ga_.

_Plate 48._]

In a landscape of green hills, where a circle of low slopes encloses a space of level ground, stands, on the rising edge of that natural amphitheatre, a group of noble ladies and children in the soft brightness of festal attire--richly decorated pink, black, white, translucent heliotrope. Below and behind them boys are manœuvring a kite, and older men direct briskly. The ladies for whom this simple and charming pastime is arranged do not seem wholly intent upon it. Their tall slender figures move as if in abstraction, an isolated group in the foreground. One grey cherry-tree, with gnarled branches etched against a clear sky, stands in their midst, bare except for the pink of earliest blossoms; and the pale green of the more distant encircling hills is here and there touched with the same luminous flowers.

Across this landscape the slender figures move in slow procession. Their robes sway about them slowly. These sweeping draperies, which Harunobu would have charged with peace and solemnity, are here touched with the tension of more unquiet curves, restless, troubled with some element of torture in their beauty. These are the lines of the branch and of the wave, bent by the strain of hidden and conflicting forces. The clear festive brightness of pink cherry-blossoms with the light of spring shining through them serves but to accentuate the faint melancholy of the trailing figures on whom lies a wistfulness that no spring can satisfy. They linger, exquisitely aimless; beautiful, and weary for a yet-unattained beauty; happy, but grave with the shadow of fleeting happiness; sad, though reconciled by the knowledge that beauty is half sadness. They have walked with expectant steps to the edge of the world; and now they pace, delicately wondering, not far from the abyss where there is nothing. Autumn will always be to them cold and unkindred; yet in the flush of the spring their thoughts will turn toward death and autumn. One cannot imagine them wholly joyous. They seem haunted by a nostalgia for remote delights, unearthly music, secret and dimly remembered gardens. Strange, late, exotic flowers are these, whom a pensiveness not known to simpler and sturdier natures disturbs with futile dreams.

A similar feeling is so often repeated in Toyohiro's work that I venture to regard it as the keynote of his genius.

Toyohiro's landscapes are without notable beauty. He had a habit of cutting across the middle of his picture with wide streaks of white mist--an unpleasant device adopted to produce the effect of distance. He is, however, an historical link of great importance between his master, Toyoharu, and his pupil, Hiroshige, the greatest of all landscape painters. As a conduit of landscape painting at a time when the Ukioye School was little given to this as a separate study, Toyohiro's work in this field may well engage our attention; but one suspects that it is the fame of his great pupil's landscapes rather than the intrinsic merit of his own that has given his their prominence.

Toyohiro produced a few pillar-prints of birds which have great distinction; an almost classic feeling marks some of them.

Toyohiro's prints are not numerous; Toyokuni's outnumber his twenty to one. His pillar-prints are very rare; his triptychs are generally notable. It is necessary to add, however, that poor impressions of his work, printed in poor colours, are more common than any other kind.

VII

THE FIFTH PERIOD: THE DOWNFALL

FROM THE DEATH OF UTAMARO TO THE DEATH OF HIROSHIGE (1806-1858)