Page:A history of Japanese colour-prints by Woldemar von Seidlitz.djvu/379

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HOKUSAI
173

volumes, in which is also the well-known large signature which Brinckmann (p. 199) reproduces; to show his extraordinary versatility it suffices to point to his models for combs and pipes, Imayo Shikken hinagata, of 1822-23, the 10,000 drawings for industrial workers, Banshoku zuka, 1835, five volumes, tinted, signed Taito (cf. Brinckmann, p. 266 ff.), and the architectural drawings, Shin hinagata, of 1836.

Of the three daughters of the artist, the youngest (Oyei?) became a very clever painter; she married a certain Minamizawa, but was later divorced. Another of his daughters, Oteru (Omiyo?), married his pupil, Yanagawa Shigenobu. Their son caused his grandfather much anxiety, forcing the old artist, in order to escape his grandson's creditors, to live during the years 1834-39 in the little village of Uraga, in the province of Sagami; indeed, he was probably the cause of Hokusai's restless manner of life—it is said that the artist never spent more than one or two months in any one place. When, in 1839, a famine broke out, and as a last calamity Hokusai's house with all his drawings was burned down, the old man was obliged to live from the sale of albums that he drew. In the same year he brought out twenty-seven of the projected hundred sheets of the Hiakkuninisshu ubagayetoki, one hundred Poems explained for Nurses (Goncourt, p. 238 ff.); to these succeeded a series of three sheets, snow, moon, and flowers. In this last period of his life, he repeatedly collaborated with Toyokuni II. (Kunisada), Kuniyoshi, his son-in-law Shigenobu, and Yeisen, in illustrating books. In 1843 appeared his small Mangwa.

In 1849 the master died, at the age of ninety years. A list of his paintings and drawings is given by Goncourt, pages 269-332. No other artist has so often changed his name as Hokusai; Gonse, i. 275, mentions nine different signatures. The number of pupils trained by him is very large; the most prominent of them we shall mention later. A likeness of