Chapter IV: The Second Period: the Early Polychrome Masters (2)

Shunsho's work includes a very great number of actor-prints in the narrow upright _hoso-ye_ form and a few large square prints. He also issued a series of small illustrations for the "Ise Monogatari," an old romantic chronicle which furnished many favourite subjects to the artists. These are quiet in design and soft in colour; to them the eye may turn for rest if wearied by the straining actors. In collaboration with Shigemasa he produced a set of ten small prints representing sericulture, which have considerable charm. In 1776 the same pair of artists brought out a series of book-illustrations called "Mirror of the Beauties of the Green Houses," representing groups of courtesans occupied with the various activities of daily life--in the street, the house, the garden, and the temple. This book has been called the most beautiful ever produced in Japan; when one examines its chief rival, "The Mirror of the Beautiful Women of the Yoshiwara," by Kitao Masanobu, one need have no hesitancy in giving Shunsho's and Shigemasa's the first place. This means, very probably, the first place among the illustrated books of the world. Its pages, printed in rose, purple, brown, yellow, and grey, are rich and delicate. Sheets from all these books are often found mounted as separate prints. Shunsho's few known pillar-prints are generally magnificent.

Size 12½ × 6. Signed _Shunsho ga_. Gookin Collection.

_Plate 21._]

Because of his enormous productiveness, Shunsho's work in _hoso-ye_ form is common, frequently in fine condition. Most of the _hoso-ye_ prints were originally issued in joined groups of three; the groups are seldom found intact now. The grace of his women has made them more generally popular than his impressive men, and they are consequently harder to obtain. It must be noted that Shunsho's work is uneven, and that the majority of the pieces offered are either tame and uninteresting examples of pot-boiling or caricatures that lack the intensity which lifts certain of the artist's most grotesque figures to tragic heights. The matchless Shunsho collection of Mr. Frederick W. Gookin is full of such prints as rarely come into the market to-day. Occasionally the more distinguished ones are met with; and they are treasures which the practised collector eagerly seizes. Fortunately print dealers are not, as a rule, conscious of the greatness of the difference, and they will frequently offer side by side a print that is merely one of Shunsho's commonest pieces of hack-work and a print that is one of the glories of the Ukioye School. On such occasions the collector has the pleasure of profiting by his own discrimination.

Shunsho's large square prints and pillar-prints are of extreme rarity.

BUNCHO.

Connected by association with the school of Shunsho, yet lifted by his originality to a place quite apart from it, is the artist Ippitsusai Buncho. His master, a certain Ishikawa Kogen (or Yukimoto) of the classical Kano School, seems to have meant little to him; from the beginning of his production, about 1765, Shunsho's and Harunobu's influence chiefly guided him. He and Shunsho jointly published in 1770 three volumes of actor-portraits enclosed in fans. Little is known of his life except that he was originally a Samurai; he is said to have turned from his original master to the Ukioye School and to have led a life of dissipation until eventually his friends persuaded him to abandon such things and procured for him the honorary title of Hokyo. After this, we hear nothing of him. He died in 1796.

Buncho's work attracts the observer with a charm different from that of any other Ukioye artist. A curious mannerism in his way of drawing faces and a fascinating perverse grace in the attitudes of his figures mark his prints. Practically all his work is in the _hoso-ye_ form. His subjects are chiefly young male actors in the rôles of women. Harunobu's influence, manifest in Plate 22, brought him grace but not sweetness. There is an astringent quality in his work that prevents it from ever being serene. His figures, whose line-work is the apotheosis of suavity and studied refinement, are arched into slightly strained and tortured attitudes; complex forces seem to dominate them like unseen winds; consuming or delicate passions move obscurely through their limbs and faces. Their heads poise at unnatural angles as if consciously turning their indifferent eyes from the spectacle of common things toward a secret and hypnotizing world of their own. These alien beings haunt one; it seems as if they had some mystery to reveal, some disturbing wonder to communicate could one but make them speak.

Size 12 × 5½. Signed _Ippitsusai Buncho ga_. Mansfield Collection.

_Plate 22._]

Part of Buncho's strangeness lies in the fact that he seeks for his figures not a human but an abstract and geometrical grace. His famous print, often reproduced, of the actor Segawa Kikunojo as a lady in white carrying an orange umbrella beneath a willow-tree, is a study in the harmonics of pure line; to this end every other element of representation has been sacrificed. Line exists here not merely to bound a form but for its own inherent beauty. Buncho is the greatest of all masters of the geometry of lines and spaces; these have, as he arranges them, the inevitability and clarity of a mathematical demonstration.

His use of colour is equally notable and strange. By employing tints that are almost discords he produces arresting and fascinating effects. His combinations of orange and slaty grey, or dull red and slaty blue and pale yellow, or pink and purple, have an uncanny vibrancy that makes them stand out in one's memory.

Buncho's strangeness has a further aspect. There is in him an intangible spiritual abnormality. I am led to localize this in his portraits of the actor Segawa Kikunojo, and to imagine a curious relation between the two. Some of his portraits of this actor are the flower of his work. In them appears a passionately rarefied beauty; they have an unusual pitch, like the overstrained vibration of violin strings stirred by some heavy blow. Segawa Kikunojo was the foremost woman-impersonator of his time. His grace in such rôles is attested by prints from the hands of many artists; but none rise to the unearthly beauty of Buncho's. Even if we knew nothing of the life of the Japanese stage at this time, or of the custom of actors like Segawa Kikunojo to dress and live like women when off the stage, we might still be put on inquiry by the peculiar ethereal quality of some of these portraits. For art whose initial impulse lies in morbid regions often flies into regions of the most disembodied spirituality for expression. Flowers of the morass frequently have a pale delicacy that is alien to the flowers of the field.

It is, however, with a confession of fancifulness that I reconstruct the following story to account for Buncho. He, a Samurai, was driven by keen artistic sensibility to the study of painting under a classical master. From this studio he was lured by the glitter and glamour of Ukioye into the world of prints and actors, and sank into a slough of dissipation above which gleamed the balefully beautiful star of Segawa Kikunojo. Haunted by a perverse susceptibility, his tense-strung nerves vibrated at that morbid touch into notes of such disembodied sweetness as the world has scarcely known elsewhere; and at last he passed into retirement and death, still the puppet of a disturbing illusion. He was an unbalanced temperament, a dreamer of keen and attenuated beauty that has nothing in common with the normal wholesome life of earth.

Grey background. Size 14 × 9½. Signed _Shunyei ga_.

_Plate 23._]

His prints are exceedingly rare; many a good collection possesses not a single fine specimen of his work. I had never seen or heard of a pillar-print by him until very recently; but lately an interesting one has been found in Japan.

SHUNYEI.

Shunsho's vigorous style had many followers, among whom Shunyei is commonly regarded as the most important. He was born in 1767, and lived until 1819. His teacher Shunsho's manner dominated his work from his earliest years, though some late sheets exist in which he followed Kiyonaga. It is believed that originally he used the name Shunjo; fine work is extant with that signature. He had many pupils, and was himself an able painter; but his ordinary work is largely derivative. At times, however, his _hoso-ye_ actor-prints achieve an effect of great power by the use of large masses of colour. He had a certain sharpness of observation--a certain knack of catching in his portraits the peculiarities of his models, that produces an effect less dignified but more vivid than Shunsho's. A sense of humour glimmers through his rendering of some of these keenly drawn and intimately characterized actor-faces. Unmistakable as may be the features of a Danjuro or a Hanshiro drawn by Shunsho, one nevertheless feels that the personality of the actor has been largely dominated by Shunsho's supreme interest in the passion or terror of the rôle; and though he pictured the face of the actor, the spirit which he sought was wholly the spirit of the part. Shunyei, on the other hand, often managed to retain the idiosyncrasies of the sitter and his peculiar spiritual flavour; and though his works are not often as beautiful as Shunsho's, they are frequently more human. On the whole, we may say that Shunsho created generalized types, Shunyei reproduced observed individuals.

Shunyei produced, besides the actors in _hoso-ye_ form by which he is best known, a few large heads and full-length portraits of actors marked by a strength of drawing and a breadth of characterization different from his usual work. One of these is reproduced in Plate 23. On a grey background, this powerfully designed figure stands out with gigantic simplicity in masses of dull colour. The prints of this rare type are perhaps Shunyei's best. Beside them must rank the large actor-heads, interesting to the collector because of their relation to the work of another great artist, Sharaku. It is still uncertain whether Sharaku or Shunyei was the inventor of this type of large bust-portrait. Dr. Kurth assumes, for the greater glory of Sharaku, that he was the precursor; but the question cannot be regarded as settled.

Size 13 × 6. Unsigned, but stamped with Jar Seal.

_Plate 24._]

SHUNKO.

The equal of Shunyei among Shunsho's other pupils is to be found in Katsukawa Shunko. He was the spiritual image of his master, except that he had not his master's full command of terror. His figures, as in Plate 24, poise or sway with gentler emotions; as a rule, they are agreeable rather than impressive. One comes to recognize him frequently by the peculiar suavity of his designs. It is true that he sometimes approaches very near to Shunsho's power; but this is less characteristic and less interesting than his quieter manner. It is unnecessary to treat of him at great length, for most of his work is of a type whose main qualities have been treated fully under Shunsho. It is not known when Shunko was born; he died in 1827.

It may be noted that he sometimes sealed his prints instead of signing them, using a jar-shaped seal much like that which Shunsho had made famous.

In the Spaulding Collection, Boston, is a remarkable full-size triptych by Shunko, representing a party of actors picnicking in the country. The style shows it to be greatly influenced by Kiyonaga; and the whole composition of this beautiful piece is different from most of Shunsho's work.

OTHER FOLLOWERS OF SHUNSHO AND HIS SCHOOL.

SHUNRI was another pupil of Shunsho; he appears to have been a competent designer, but no great figure. SHUNTOKU, SHUNKI, SHUNKAKU, SHOYU, SHUNYEN, SHUNKEN, and SHUNKYOKU may be described in the same words. Each has perhaps produced a few beautiful works, but their originality is not marked.

RANTOKUSAI SHUNDO, a gifted pupil of Shunsho, has left work so rare that one cannot make any very definite statement about him. His few known prints are admirable. One suspects that this signature is merely the early name of some well-known artist.

SHUNSEI, SHUNRIN, SOBAI, and SHUNKIO are later artists; their importance is small.

SHUNTEI, "owing partly to illness and partly to systematic indulgence in drink" (Strange), and partly to complete lack of natural distinction, produced nothing of interest; and his coarse battle-scenes may be classed with the crude work characteristic of a later period. He worked chiefly between 1800 and 1820.

KINCHO SEKIGA is said to have been a pupil of Buncho.

SHUNKO II was a pupil of Shunyei. His name is written in different characters from that of the first Shunko. KICHOSAI SHUNKO also produced actor-prints.

YUMISHO was a very rare pupil who adopted Kiyonaga's style in line-work. The same may be said of YENSHI, some of whose work is very beautiful; he appears to have come much under the influence of Yeishi. Several of his triptychs are fine.

TOYOHARU.

Utagawa Toyoharu is a strangely equivocal figure in print history; his fame is great, but no surviving print of his, so far as I have been able to ascertain, is of a quality to justify fully his reputation. Born in 1733, he studied with Shigenaga and probably with Toyonobu, produced a limited number of prints in the sixties and seventies, withdrew from prints to painting when Kiyonaga's new style grew to splendour, and died in 1814. He is said to have been a sensitive and delicately strung individual who shrank from competition and worked obscurely. His best-known work is a series of twelve designs for the various months done in collaboration with Shunsho and Shigemasa; each print is divided diagonally into two scenes--a device of unfortunate and ingenious ugliness. The figures, however, have a certain delicate grace. His pillar-prints, which are rare, have considerable beauty.

Toyoharu has been called a greater artist than Shunsho. It may be true, yet I am inclined to regard this view either as the result of his painting and not his print-designing, or as part of a great Toyoharu myth, for which the later success of his pupils is responsible. Certain it is that of his surviving prints few are noteworthy, and that he was greater as a painter and teacher than as a print-designer. We shall remember him more as the instructor of Toyokuni and Toyohiro and as the precursor of Hiroshige than for any of his own prints that remain to us.

As a figure-painter, he is known as the founder of the Utagawa School. As a landscape-painter, he made successful use of European perspective, which he probably learned from Dutch engravings, and was perhaps the first Ukioye print-artist to return to the habit of the older schools and treat landscape not as a mere setting but as a thing by itself. His scenes are too stiff and too crowded with petty details to lay any real claim to beauty. He used as the dominant note in many of them the orange colour so dear to Koriusai; but no pigment can well be imagined that is less fitted for landscape-rendering. Yet the historical importance of these prints is great; for they are, so to speak, the grandparents of the marvellous landscapes of Hiroshige.

UTAGAWA TOYONOBU is believed by some authorities to have been merely Toyoharu's early name; others think him identical with Ishikawa Toyonobu; and still others regard him as an independent artist who was a pupil of Ishikawa Toyonobu, his greater namesake. The few prints we have by him--I know of less than half a dozen--are not sufficient to enable one to form an opinion as to this.

TOYOMARU and TOYOHISA were among Toyoharu's pupils.

SHIGEMASA.

Kitao Shigemasa may be called the great chameleon of the Ukioye School: a discriminating chameleon, who chose only the greatest artists of each decade from whom to take his changing hue. As M. Raymond Koechlin expresses it, "it was his destiny to reflect in his art the art of the most original of his contemporaries." Born about 1740, he lived until 1819. His teacher was Shigenaga; this master died not long after Shigemasa commenced work with him. Thus Shigemasa began painting early enough to be influenced by the last of the Primitives; and his first prints, dating from about 1764, are graceful three-colour renderings of actor-themes in the manner of Kiyomitsu, and more brutal ones in the manner of Kiyomasu. With the rise of Harunobu and the perfection of polychrome printing, Shigemasa turned to that style; later he followed Koriusai, in whose manner he produced some wonderfully beautiful large sheets of women and some fine pillar-prints. Still later he followed the style of Shunsho. Together with this artist he produced in 1786 a set of ten small sheets representing the various stages of sericulture, in which he surpasses his collaborator. The same two artists had earlier collaborated, in 1776, to produce the famous illustrated book "Mirror of the Beauties of the Green Houses." These illustrations are not signed; but comparing them with Shigemasa's portion of the sericulture series, which are signed separately by the two artists, we may well believe that a large part of the peculiar grace of the "Green Houses" is Shigemasa's and not Shunsho's contribution. With Shunsho and Toyoharu, he collaborated in a series of designs for the twelve months, of which I have already spoken under Toyoharu. Like so many other artists of this period, Shigemasa gradually withdrew from work in the eighties before the blaze of Kiyonaga's glory. Kiyonaga himself was perhaps influenced by the older artist.

Shigemasa's draughtsmanship is the one quality that marks him through all his changes; from first to last, it is superb. With a fine firmness and ease he produces, as in Plate 18, designs in which restraint combines with great expressiveness. His faces have repose and distinction; his draperies are drawn with notable simplicity and dignity; his cool and quiet colour is admirable. Through all his styles runs a fastidious delicacy of feeling, and what Fenollosa terms "an even mastery." He never attempted the impossible or strained towards the unattainable; all his work has the stamp of a calmly working, reserved, confident artist. The deliberate, flawless craftsmanship of his works places him beside the greatest.

Considering the length of his career, he produced surprisingly little work; important prints by him are now rarer than those of any other artist of this period. His pillar-prints, which are particularly fine, have been for many years proverbially few. As a rule only his earlier prints are signed. His surimono are, however, generally signed with the brush-name Kosuisai. Sheets from his numerous books are often mounted as separate prints. Collectors differ in their opinions as to whether it is advisable thus to take to pieces the sheets of a bound volume, such as the "Green Houses." Any such act, in dealing with art treasures, should be approached only after careful consideration; but it seems in this case a desirable method of preserving and exhibiting what are, after all, wholly separate pictures.

V

THE THIRD PERIOD: KIYONAGA AND HIS FOLLOWERS

FROM THE MATURITY OF KIYONAGA TO HIS RETIREMENT (1780-1790)