32 
HOUSE & GARDEN 
“Swallows," one of Utamaro's most beautiful prints, ex¬ 
quisite in both line and color 
“A Girl by a Stream,” the work of Moromasa, and typical 
of the earlier Japanese color prints 
ing so dear to the occidental mind, is disdained by the Japanese called the naturalistic, 
artist. He scorns to attempt “life-like fruit pieces.’’ He sent flowers, grasses, 
attempt 
keeps his design practi¬ 
cally and intentionally flat. 
The Japanese artist treats 
perspective—when he in¬ 
troduces it at all—in ac¬ 
cordance with the ancient 
art-canons of Chinese 
painting, as imaginative, 
not as reproductive of the 
precise idea of literal 
actuality. Not ignorance 
but intention leads the 
Japanese color print art¬ 
ist upon his deliberative 
way. Again, oriental and 
occidental ideals of hu¬ 
man beauty differ greatly. 
But even here the Japa¬ 
nese artist seldom wishes 
to produce actual por¬ 
traiture. The faces he 
introduces are, instead, to 
be taken as conventional 
symbols, and one almost 
always finds them set at 
the same angle. Occa¬ 
sionally more literal por¬ 
traiture is attempted, as 
in the rare portrait of 
Hiroshige by Kunisada. 
To the uninitiated this 
might seem provocative 
of monotony, but once the 
intention of Japanese art 
is understood an interest 
will be quickened. Shu- 
zan, a Japanese art- 
writer, had this to say in 
speaking of the art of his 
country in 1777: “Among 
the various kinds of paint¬ 
ing there is one which is 
“A Japanese Hero," by Kumjoshi (1800-1861) 
in which it is thought proper to repre¬ 
fishes, insects, etc., exactly as they ap¬ 
pear in Nature. This is 
a special style and cer¬ 
tainly not one to be de¬ 
spised ; but since it only 
aims at showing the forms 
of things, without regard 
for the canons of art, it 
is after all merely a com¬ 
monplace and can lay no 
claims to good taste.” 
Thus we have an early 
contemporary Japa nese 
opinion of the naturalis¬ 
tic in art. At the same 
time, as von Seidlitz apt¬ 
ly remarks, “The differ¬ 
ential of Japanese art is 
just this, that into per¬ 
fectly conventional forms 
is infused a content con¬ 
stantly fresh-drawn from 
Nature.” Furthermore, 
the marvelous mastery of 
line which the Japanese 
artists commanded en¬ 
abled the designers of 
color prints to convey the 
sense of the spirit to their 
work. 
How the Prints are 
Made 
As a knowledge of 
how a thing is made 
should increase one’s in¬ 
terest in it, the collector 
of Japanese color prints 
will wish to know how 
these were made. 
First the color orint 
artist drew his design in 
(Continued on page 66) 
