I HOUSE AND GARDEN | 
November, 1909 
i6 5 
AN OFFERING 
The colors, like those of the best 
English prints of the Eighteenth Cen¬ 
tury, should be soft and delicate, melt¬ 
ing one into the other and not defined 
roughly by the block. In Japan, after 
the year 1850, as the work of the 
great school of Ukiyoye became more 
and more popular, the artists used 
cheaper dyes, and became more hurried 
in their work. Some fine reproduc¬ 
tions have been made in late years, it 
is true, but it seems almost impossible 
ior the Japanese, clever as he is, to 
successfully imitate the old coloring, 
even when he retains the old blocks. 
The introduction of aniline dyes into 
Japan marked the degeneration of the 
prints, the violent colors taking the 
place of the old soft vegetable,, tints. 
The difference can be readily noticed 
by those who have access to museums, 
between those to be found in the collec¬ 
tions and those of the cheaper variety 
sold at Japanese shops. 
A knowledge of the block will fur¬ 
ther help. Many of the finer Japanese 
shops have these blocks on exhibition, 
and not until the collector has seen 
them and has had all the process ex¬ 
plained to him, will he truly appreciate the charm of the art. 
The subjects attempted by the artists of this school covered 
the widest range, but an artist would frequently 
specialize on some particular phase of life that ap¬ 
pealed to his fancy. Some of the masters have dis¬ 
tinguishing characteristics that the intelligent collector 
readily notes. Thus in Moronubu, we have the 
gracefully flowing lines, that were seldom equaled by 
his successors. Haronubu devoted himself to the 
portraiture of young women, slim flowerlike 
beauties of ineffable charm and refinement. 
In Kiyonubu we find a strength of outline 
and a forceful sweep, so wonderfully shown in 
his patterns of old theatrical costumes. Shun- 
jT sho, one of the most skillful of the artists of 
sf his school, was one of the big influences in print 
making. His work is characterized by its sim¬ 
plicity of line and a reposeful air that is unmis¬ 
takable. 
Shunsho’s pupil Hokusai is probably the best 
known of the Ukiyoye school. His fecundity was 
remarkable. A moderate sized collection of his prints 
forms a veritable history of the Japanese during his 
lifetime, as he depicted thousands of subjects with 
an extraordinary sense of their human and artistic 
values. 
In his preface to “The Hundred Views of Fuji¬ 
yama” Hokusai has this to say of himself: “From 
the age of six, I had a mania for drawing the forms 
of things. By the time I was fifty, I had published 
an infinity of designs, but all I have produced before 
the age of seventy is not worth taking in account. 
At seventy-five I have learned a little about the real 
structure of nature, — of animals, plants, trees, birds, 
fishes, and insects. In consequence, when I am 
eighty I shall have made still more progress. At 
ninety I shall penetrate the mystery of things; at a 
hundred I shall certainly have reached a marvelous 
stage, and when I am a hundred and ten, everything 
if 
& 
SHUNSHO 
TWO GIRLS TOYUKUNI 
I do—be it but a line or a dot—will 
be alive. I beg those who live as long 
as I, to see if 1 do not keep my word. 
Written at the age of seventy-five by 
me, once Hokusai, to-day Gwakio-ro- 
jin, ‘the old man mad about drawing.”’ 
The work of Kiyonaga, the inspirer 
of Utamaro and his school, is 
notable on account of its sim¬ 
plicity and great dignity, and 
his prints have a nobility of 
feeling that have excited no 
less an authority than Pro¬ 
fessor Fenollosa to use the 
word “classic” in speaking of 
them. His open-air scenes are his 
best, though some of his interiors rival 
those of Haronubu. His young girls 
are the most fascinating to be found 
in the prints, with the possible ex¬ 
ception of Utamaro who equaled him 
at first. Later the work of Utamaro 
degenerated into exaggeration, his 
women, no longer elegant or majestic, 
became mere freaks of tallness and 
affectation. 
Utamaro discovered many things 
about colors and he was the first Jap¬ 
anese artist to deviate from the tra¬ 
ditional manner of treating the face. He was, with Hiroshige 
and Hoksusai, one of the greatest influences on European art. 
Theodore Child wrote in 1892 of this influence, “The 
Paris salon of to-day as compared with the salon of 
ten years ago is like a May morning compared with 
a dark November day.” 
Toyukuni lacks the spirituality and fineness of 
Utamaro, but his calligraphic stroke is virile and full 
of individuality. His best work is that which has 
the stage with its actors for subjects. Kunisada is 
revered chiefly on account of his backgrounds. After 
the death of his master Toyukuni, he styled himself 
“Toyukuni the Second.” 
Hiroshige is the great landscapist of Ukiyoye, but, 
like most Japanese artists, he did not confine him¬ 
self entirely to the one branch, attempting nearly 
every subject that came under his notice. His work 
shows the Dutch influence strongly, as his teacher 
Toyohiro had a large collection of the Dutch wood- 
cuts and often imitated them in his paintings. The 
earlier prints of Hiroshige are the most beautiful. 
The introduction of cheaper pigments may be traced 
in the later prints, although Hiroshige fought—a 
losing fight, it is true—against their introduction. 
Hiroshige was an impressionist, he worked in broad 
manner, effectively subordinating the detail. Among 
our great painters, no one was influenced more than 
Whistler, by the art of Hiroshige. 
The prints of Yeizan and Yeisen are much 
in favor with some collectors, a though these 
artists are not among the greatest of the 
school of Ukiyoye. Yeisen together with Yeishi 
imitated Utamaro and some of t heir work 
equals his. 
Excellent books have been written on Japa¬ 
nese prints by such authorities as Prof. Fenollosa, M. 
Louis Gonse, M. Edmond de Goncourt, Wm. Anderson, 
C. J. Holmes, John La Farge, Sadikichi Hartmann, 
Stewart Dick, Morgan Sheperd, and Dora Amsden. 
