The masters of Ukioye : a complete historical description of Japanese paintings and color prints of the Genre school

Front matter

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Preface

In arranging a chronological exhibition of works by the Masters of the Ukioye, or Popular School of Japanese Artists, Mr. Ketcham has rendered a service to students and lovers of Japanese Art for which they should be very grateful. That the exhibition has been undertaken partly for commercial reasons does not lessen the obligation. In addition to the selections made from Mr. Ketcham’ s extensive stock, it includes also, through the kindness of their owners in loaning them for the occasion, a large proportion of the finest and most beautiful works belonging to private collections in the United States. Nothing like it has ever been attempted before. For the first time does a connected series of paintings and prints by all of the leading artists of this school, hung together in proper sequence, make it possible to gain a comprehensive view of the history of Ukioye art through all the phases of its rise, development, and decay. Especially is this true as regards the NishikiyS, or color prints from wood blocks, which are the most distinctive product of the school. Here may be seen rare proof-impressions from early blocks, which are printed in soUd black, with no attempt at gradations of tone. The several varieties of hand-colored prints are represented by many fine examples. Then in the Nishikiye proper may be traced the growing mastery of the artists over the resources of the printer’s craft. The works of the earlier men are notable for combined vigor of conception and sweetness of line, rather than for especial beauty of color. There is, however, a charm in their quiet simplicity which is lacking in the works of later periods ; and some of the prints for which, in addition to the black outline, but two tintblocks were used, are exquisitely lovely in color, as well as wonderful achievements in design. After Torii Kiyomitsu began the use of a third color-block, the rivalry between many able artists resulted in rapid progress, until the art reached its highest development in strength and beauty of design, in richness and variety of color, and in perfection of printing, in the time of the great master Torii Kiyonaga and his contemporaries. The works shown in this exhibition make it possible to follow this development throughout, and to trace the subsequent decline of the art, at first gradual, then more rapid, as the creative impulse which stimulated the masters of the eighteenth century died out, and little was left beyond mere delight in technical proficiency. The brief renaissance due to the genius of Hokusai and Hiroshige is illustrated by some superb examples of their finest productions. That few works of their contemporaries and followers are shown is not because the art became extinct after the death of these men, but for the reason that their aesthetic value is so small.

It was a happy idea to show paintings and prints in connection with each other. Only by seeing both together is it possible to gain more than a one-sided and incomplete view of the aims and evolution of the school. Many of the Ukioye artists were both painters and designers of prints. Some of them were painters only ; others made but few drawings for reproduction ; whilst others gave their attention so exclusively to print-designing, that few, and in some cases no, paintings by them are known to exist. Nor was it unusual even for some of the most renowned designers of Nishikiye to suddenly give up drawing for publishers and thereafter devote themselves to painting alone.

In still another respect this exhibition is unique. Thanks to the able assistance of Mr. Ernest F. Fenollosa of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the pictures and prints are shown with the dates accurately ascribed to them. Of Mr. Fenollosa’ s qualifications for this work it is scarcely necessary to speak, as he is well known as pre-eminently the most competent authority upon the history of Oriental Art in the Far West. But it may be of interest to state that the determination of dates has been reached by a most careful comparison of a very large number of works. To this task he brought the critical methods of the modern scientific investigator, the penetrative insight of the student of Oriental philosophy, the fine perception of the artist, and the intimate knowledge of Japanese manners and customs acquired during his twelve years’ residence in Dai Nippon. Aside from the internal evidence of the changes in each artist’s manner from year to year, the costumes depicted, taken in connection with records of contemporaneous events, and especially the history of the theatre, have furnished the most reliable index. For in Japan, no less than in the Occident, fashion has held tyrannical sway from time immemorial. The changes have, perhaps, been within a narrower range in Japan than in Europe during the last one hundred and fifty years, but they have been no less frequent. From the style of a woman’s coiffure alone it is often possible to determine the date of a print or painting ; and taken in connection with the fashion of the garments depicted, the manner of wearing the obi, and the patterns of the brocades, even the season of the year may sometimes be arrived at with reasonable certainty.

The Popular School of Japanese Art is different from all the other schools, in that it is the art of the common people. If it did not, even in its palmiest days, give to the world works which touch the highe.st note in the gamut of artistic production, or arrive at the dignity of the classical schools, we are indebted to it for the most beautiful specimens of the printers’ art which have ever been executed in any land or at any time. To this statement the present exhibition bears eloquent testimony. And from it another

IV valuable lesson may be gleaned by those who have eyes to see. And that is that even the most trivial and commonplace subject may be so presented as to invest it with aesthetic value. It would be difficult, indeed, to find more striking examples of the truth that Art lies in treatment, and that the real subject of the artist is not necessarily the nominal one, but what he expresses by means of it.

Frederick W. Gookin.

V

CATALOGUE.

IWASA Matahei About 1630.

Painting on a screen of two panels.

A lady with musical instrument and pupil.

The Ukioye is a school of Japanese painting and print designing, which for the last three centuries has been the special organ of expression for the common people. Its artists, sprung mostly from the ranks of the people, confined their subjects to the occupations and recreations of their class. Every change of fashion in the gay life of the capital at Yedo was faithfully followed in their drawings ; and thus the Ukioye, unlike the hieratic and idealistic schools of earlier days, has the charm of being a complete mirror of Japanese life. At first confined to painting, it soon spread with the discovery of block printing into book illustration ; and still later into the elaborate single sheet print whieh could be used on the wall for a cheap picture. When these prints, at first colored by hand, became embellished with flat tints printed from wooden blocks, the most splendid results of the school were reached.

The founder of this school was Iwasa Matahei. Previous to his day, the end of the sixteenth century, Japanese art and civilization were dominated by Chinese ideals, as were the nations of mediaeval Europe b}' classic tradition. But the overthrow of the Ashikaga court, and the rise to power of upstarts like Hideyoshi, brought Japanese life and character again into the field of interest. It is true that scenes of native court life and of earlier dynastic wars had been occasionally painted by the court artists of the Kano and Tosa sehools ; but with Matahei began the painting of contemporary life, or genre ; and his are the first of the long and full series we possess of scenes in the life of Japanese women of the middle and lower classes.

Matahei was first a pupil of the ancient Tosa school, later of the Kano. His third manner, of about 1620, fuses and enriches the two styles by a new line-drawing of expressive beauty and clinging grace. His fourth and last manner is a rise to complete realistic rendering, whose force absorbs, but does not destroy the grace of outline. His work is confined to painting, and is extremely rare.

This specimen of Matahei is one of the finest and largest remaining of his fourth manner. The easy pose of the large figures, the fine but not over-graceful flow of line, the careful drawing of details as in the hands, the breadth of the main masses, and especially the strong contrast of the black and white robes, all contribute to its striking force. Nothing at once so simple, and yet so full of the feeling of real presence, occurs again in the course of Ukioye.

2. School of Matahei About 1650.

Painting on a small panel.

Female dancer.

The new movement begun so brilliantly by Matahei found no worthy continuator for a generation. Whether the interest in Japanese subjects temporarily waned on the founding of the new tyranny at Yedo, whether the people of the new capital were yet unconscious of a life and standard apart from the nobility, or whether the genius of Matahei was too personal for transmission, it is clear that between 1630 and 1670 only a scattered series of weak imitations was produced, mostly unsigned, and with no common quality of style to merit the name of school. It is a sort of interregnum in Ukioye, with no dominant master.

This painting is a good average specimen of the work. While far inferior to Matahei in drawing, in the large quality of the dress design and in the fine color it reminds of his day.

3. Hishigawa Moronobu. About 1675.

Large print in black.

An incident of a historic battle.

Lent by Charles J. Morse of Chicago.

During the interregnum the newly discovered art of book illustration offered the most hopeful line of advance. The block cutting became stronger and freer, more like the stroke of the Japanese pen. About 1770 Moronobu, a designer of extraordinary power, entered this field, and produced the first in that rich series of woodcuts of Japanese life which culminates in the present century with Hokusai. Relying upon the extraordinary force of his ink-strokes and the fine simple massing of his blacks, he cared little to embellish the design with landscape background or fine detail. His earliest works are the strongest in this respect, and are eagerly sought for by book collectors.

Kven before Moronobu’ s day there had been an attempt to cheapen pictorial production by an issue of editions of rapid brush sketches, called Otsuye. These probably gave Moronobu the clew to the single sheet print, into which he now threw the finest qualities of his book illustration. They were generally left in the black impression of the single block ; but sometimes touched by hand with spots of orange and green after the manner of the Otsuye.

This is one of the earliest of Moronobu’s large single sheet impressions, showing his most vigorous design and splendid massing of the flat blacks. Its subject does not properly belong to the Ukioye, but to the illustration of history.

4. Moronobu About 1780.

Painting on a panel.

Female figure, walking.

Moronobu was not only a designer of ink prints, but a painter also. In this line he took the traditions of the Matahei school as a starting point ; but his early training as a designer for embroideries tended to enrich the sharp color details of his dress patterns. Here his command of strong line is deliberately sacrificed to delicate grace, yet one feels the draughtsman under the faint lines. He introduced a gay sunny coloring in which red and white predominate.

His work first does justice to the splendid coiffure of the Japanese female head, whose forms become exceedingly large and rich between 1780 and 1790, and whose subsequent rapid variations afford a most important key to the determination of dates.

This specimen is a good example of the style described. There has been no such grace of posture and flowing line since the days of Matahei. The design of the costume is bizarre and cut up, showing something of the extravagance in which the dawning consciousness of a popular taste ran away with itself toward the close of the century.

5. Moronobu About 1690.

Large ink print.

Standing court lady.

Moronobu’s style may be said to have come to its ripeness at the beginning of the famous period Genroku, 1688. It combines the firmness of line of his earlier prints with the delicate design and proportion of his paintings. The figures become more stately, the heads more solid. Paintings of this date and book illustrations abound. But a single sheet print is the rarity of a collection.

This is the finest large single sheet print in the manner of Moronobu’s Genroku paintings. It establishes the first ripe style since the days of Matahei. It marks the second and permanent founding of Ukioye as a separate branch of Japanese pictorial art. It achieves a self-conscious mastery that can be taught. Moronobu has hosts of pupils in his atelier. A school has been founded.

6. Moronobu About 1794.

Painting on a kakemono.

Picnic by a river’s bank.

The populace of Genroku was given over to every sort of extravagance and gay dissipation. The world was full of fairs and puppet shows and wild street dances. As ever fond of out-of-door enjoyments they delighted in picnics, in drinking and music, in boating parties and horse races. Though the patterns were not large, the widest license was granted in the color of costumes. Soft, indescribable shades of pink and blue and green shot like the threads of their own shuttles through the warp of the blossoming boughs. In technique Moronobu’s landscape detail was much like that of the Kano. He delighted in long panoramic rows of street scenes crowded with figures. The effect is always refined and brilliant, even if a little hard. It is this style which became the most common with his many followers, and is often reproduced on screens as late as 1715.

This is a typical specimen of Moronobu’s last manner and of the school in general. It renders for us in color the rich figure compositions of his illustrated books.

Miyagawa Choshun About 1710.

Painting on small screen of two panels.

Interior with group of girls.

When after the death of Moronobu it became demonstrated that his pupils could conceive of nothing else than reproducing his manner, a revolt was quickly started by four yoimg men at the commencement of the eighteenth century. The self-consciousness of the people was becoming too strong, too antagonistic to the formality of the Samurai’s life, to allow any new tyranny to spring up in its own ranks. Provided it did not interfere with politics, it was granted by the government free license for enjoyment ; and one of the greatest and newest of its enjoyments w^as art. Even the art of Moronobu was seen to be too hard and formal, partaking of the classic purity of Kano design. The aim of these younger men was to create an art as rich and free and new as their own lives. Rejecting all trace of idealism, it frankly loses itself in pleasure and splendor. But here, fortunately for the Ukioye, it creates a new ideal for itself in the conception of this splendor. In line it substitutes for the restrained grace of its predecessors a decorative abandon and sumptuousness in drapery. In pattern it avoids the patches of small design characteristic of Genroku, and delights in large plaids, suggestions of flowers and leaves, and sudden changes in the ground color, Vvdiich give scope for a more organic treatment in the harmony. The color, as such, no longer conceived in conventional costume, discovers laws and beauties of its own. It is especially in its coloring that Ukioye now adds a new and splendid note to the sum of Japanese art.

Of these young contemporaries Miyagawa Choshun, himself a pupil of Moronobu, strikes in painting the new note. A more creative colorist than Moronobu, he never designed for illustration for single sheet prints. And yet a study of the history of Ukioye, even of the prints, would, without him, lose one of its strongest links. His subjects are much like those of Moronobu, picnic and stx'eet scenes, or portraits of noted belles ; but the new method of drawing the strange patterns so as to enhance the sweep of the drapery, and their conception as factors in a creative color-scheme, give his work a softness and breadth which are its distinguishing features. He is the centre of a large group of painters who, if not always his personal pupils, borrow from him these characteristics.

This beautiful clear sample of Choshun’s middle manner exemplifies well the points made. In the group at the right of the screen, especially, every touch palpitates with color sensitiveness. Strange harmonious culminations of line and tone are everywhere developed.

8. Choshun About 1720.

Painting on a kakemono.

Standing girl and attendant.

Here is an exemplification of Choshun’s latest manner. The touch of the brush is intensely strong and nervous, the contrasts more violent, the figures taller and the heads less square. It is probably a great loss to art that Choshun never attempted prints.

9. Miyagawa Choki About 1725.

Painting on a panel.

Tady reading under a willow tree.

Choki is the son of Choshun and one of the most original of his followers, who, like their master, devote themselves entirely to painting. The qualities of breadth developed by the father are still present in the son, but united to a strange thickness of color which pursues the Ukioye in his wmndering from classic paths. But it is rich and splendid and revels in color scales before unsounded.

10. Miyagawa Shunsui About 1740.

Painting on a kakemono.

Uady washing her hair.

Shunsui, possibly a second son of Choshun, but certainly a personal pupil, carries the line of the sweet painting of female subjects down through the very centre of the seventeenth century, unmingled with the quality of contemporaiy^ theatrical schools which we shall presently consider. His work is always original, full of distinction, and subtle in color. It is not -without reason, as we shall see, that this work foreshadows much of the gentle delineation of women so much better known in Plarunobu.

11. Katsukawa Shunsui About 1750.

Painting on a kakemono.

kady in black.

Some have said that this Shunsui is a pupil of the former ; but a comparison of their styles and handwriting confirms another tradition, that Shunsui in later life determined to change his familj^ name. Under the name of Katsukaw^a he worked at least within the limits of the 3'ears 1750 and 1765. This new name interests us because it was that taken by his famous pupil Katsukawa Shunsho, the teacher of the still more famous Hokusai. Through this name one main line of descent in the history of Ukioye is manifest.

In Shunsui ’s later Vvork his style and color pass from the exquisiteness of broken masses to the exquisiteness of simple breadth. In this work is foreshadowed the technical qualities of Shunsho’ s well known painting. To-ward the end of his life a few prints with his signature appear, but exercise no special influence.

12. Tsuneyuki About 1725.

Painting on circular panel.

Girls playing at football.

Let us now go back to another of the pupils or personal friends of Choshun. This man, Tsuneyuki, one of the greatest artists of Ukioye, is unmentioned in its written annals. The reflnement of his feeling, the quality of his touch, as in the tree trunk, and the flrst character of his name, make it extremely probable that he was flrst a pupil of Kano Tsunenobu before he entered this freer, if humbler field. But in the breadth and originality of his color he is a true son of Ukioye and Choshun’s strongest successor. In the group of figures on the right the newness of the disposition of patterns is finely brought out.

13. Tsunemasa About 1768.

Painting on a panel.

Girl seated at a tea-house.

Here is another artist exceptionally prolific whose work in painting extends over a period from 1720 to 1770, but whose name is barely mentioned in the history of the Ukioye. Throughout he is a broad and original colorist. His earl}^ work is exactl}^ in the style of Tsuneyuki, whose pupil he unquestionably was. Later it is clear that he fell under the influence of Shunsui ; and in a sense it may be said that in connection with Shunsui he heads the great school of painters of women through the transition period of the century. The likeness of his feeling to that of Harunobu is here the more strongly noticeable than in the case of Shunsui, in that he is a contemporary of Harunobu.

14- Tsunemasa About 1770.

Painting on a kakemon.

Street scene on New Year’s day.

Here the similarity to Harunobu is enforced by the fact of the color in, the architectural background which forms an organic relation to the color in the figures. The sweet femininity of these slight willowy forms is surpassed only by those of Harunobu himself.

15. Kaigetsudo. About 1708.

Painting on a panel.

Large standing girl.

But of all the painters who carried on the movement headed by Choshun by far the most powerful and striking was Kaigetsudo. In spite of his mannerisms and the smallness of his heads, hands, and feet, the lines of his drapery are conceived and executed with a passionate splendor, in which the power of the Japanese brush to modulate the thickness of its stroke is like the fulness of tone from some great wdnd instrument. Here the master stroke lies in the fold at the neck and in the system of long curves into v/hich the hems of the skirts are caught up by the right hand. Kaigetsudo is also an original colorist of the greatest breadth, but lacking somewhat in the refinement of Choshun. He may be regarded as in some sense a connecting link between the school of Choshun and that of Kiyonobu, which w'e have soon to describe.

16. Kaigetsudo. About 1705.

Large ink print.

Young girl swinging her sleeve.

What splendors Kaigetsudo could create as a master of line and of dark and light alone are here fully exhibited. The sw’eep of the lines of the lighter undergarment, in whose folds the raised left hand is hidden, coming into opposition with the falling darker, stifier mass of the cast-off outer sleeve, creates the most startlingly original line scheme in the whole range of the art. What composition in dark and light, too, can mean for its own sake, is revealed in the heavy, clouded passages shot with the white lightning of poetic characters.

17. Kaigetsudo. About 1710.

Large ink print.

Girl seated upon a box.

Lent by Charles J. Morse of Chicago.

This specimen of line work in print, by the only man of the Choshun school who has left us any, is hardly less striking and original than the preceding. The system of lines about the legs suggests in force and grandeur the religious paintings of Ririomin, the great Chinese artist of the eleventh century. It is notable that at this date the arrangement of the hair is the simplest and most solid of any period in the three centuries of Ukioye. In works by Kaigetsudo various names appear signed under the main one. The commonest of these are Takuhan and Anchi. It is not certain whether these are different men or the same. Both these prints are by Takuhan.

i8. Okumura Masanobu About 1700.

Print colored by hand.

A street procession with puppets.

Of the four young men who at the commencement of the eighteenth century struck out into new paths diverging from the art of Moronobu, the school of one, namely, Choshun, we have studied to its latest developments in the third generation. We must now go back and see what the other three young men were doing. These three were Torii Kiyonobu, Torii Kiyomasu, and Okumura Masanobu. All had been trained in the more classic style of Moronobu. All aimed now to be the leaders in a popular movement, of whose separate art they had become conscious. While all three were painters of distinction, it is because, unlike Choshun, they devoted their attention primarily to the art of printing, that they were destined to exercise such a dominating influence upon the whole course of the Ukioye. Uiving and working, all three, to the ripe age of something like eighty, without exhaustion of their creative powers, their influence continued supreme over three generations. It is not an exaggeration to say that nine-tenths of the Ukioye during the first half of the last century is their work. In spite of personal peculiarities, they form together, with their prints and their peculiar coloring, a line quite separate from, and parallel to that of Choshun.

If Matahei was the originator of the Ukioye idea, and Moronobu the father of its art, these three men can be regarded as the founders of its distinctive style. They had a new world to mirror, new technical methods to invent. At first their subjects remind us of those of Moronobu ; but almost from the first a new motive enters into their work with the development at Yedo of the legitimate theatre under Japan’s first great actor, Danjuro, of whom the present Danjuro is the tenth descendent. That this histrionic art, shunned by the nobility, was rapidly becoming an organ of self-expression for the common people, destined to create out of them almost a new race, gave to these artists not only a multiplicity of popular and ever- varying groups to depict, but also the spur to develop the single sheet print as a rival organ.

Under Moronobu such prints had been rare ; now they were issued in editions of hundreds and thousands, and exported to the provinces. Another difference is that up to this day Ukioye had been chiefly the art of the more conservative Kioto. It now became the art of Yedo, which was rising into prominence as a centre of gayety and fashion, like Paris in France. Still another line was opened in the development of fiction as an important art to whose illustration these three men contributed the lighter phase of their prolific powers. It is to the dates upon these novelettes that we have to rely in identifying the years of the rapidly changing single sheet prints.

From now on we have to distinguish more carefully between periods marked by technical changes. It is not possible properly to group the art of any one of these three men by itself. We must deal with each phase of their common work in the group, noting such minor differences as from time to time arise. The first period is that which lasts from about 1700 to about 1715 ; and is characterized chiefly by bold, rich line-work analogous to that of Kaigetsudo. The prints, many of them of large size, are for the most part left in black and white ; and their occasional coloring by hand w'as probably confined to the artist’s treatment of individual impressions, not lavished upon a whole edition.

Masanobu, whose work we now first reach, was probably the oldest of the three, and the most graceful and refined in his personal style. His design from first to last is full of sweetness and distinction. In this specimen we have a subject that shows clearly his derivation from Moronobu ; but in the pose and motions and easy flow of draper}'^ we find a greater vitality even than in that of Choshun. The -Genroku type of coiffure is now becoming simpler, the fore-knot which formerly stood upright being now bent over and caught near the back of the head. Such full hand-coloring is at this day extremely rare ; and was, not improbably, executed twenty years later, possibly by Masanobu himself.

Large ink print.

Tall standing lady.

This is a very strange piece, and exhibits in another way the transition from Moronobu. Its anomaly consists in the difference between the body and the head. The former in proportion, drapery, and stilted spotted pattern is almost indistinguishable from the style of Genroku, and the personal manner of Moronobu. It seems a reminiscence of 1695. But the head is unquestionably by Masanobu, with the unmistakable head-dress of the period Hoyei. The fore-knot has now been drawn over close to the top of the head, and the side locks lie perfectly flat above the ear. It is uncertain whether Masanobu here made use of an older block by Moronobu, into w'hich he plugged and cut a new head ; or whether he designed his patterns in the Genroku style, which for certain purposes, and in certain places, had not yet gone entirely out of fashion. It is noticeable that the design upon the odz or sash is entirely in the new manner ; and this favors the latter hypothesis that the w'ork is all Masanobu’s.

20. Torii Kiyonobu About 1702.

Ink print.

Two women and a man pla3dng a game.

Kiyonobu, the great founder of the Torii school, which has lasted to the present day, was in some respects at first the central figure of the new group. If Masanobu’s style is sweet and feminine, his from the first is almost uncouth in its rotund simplicity, and apparently lawless disposition of large design. His faces are long and oval, with hooked noses, and eyes whose pupils thrown, to the corner, give that peculiar look distinctive of the Torii for generations. It was his work particularly that the aristocratic despisers of Ukioye, and of the popular pleasures it depicted, regarded as the sign of degeneration, and condemned as hopelessly vulgar. Yet it was this style which, breaking so utterly with the past, opened a way for all the characteristic splendors of the future.