Page:A history of Japanese colour-prints by Woldemar von Seidlitz.djvu/390

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184
JAPANESE COLOUR-PRINTS

colour (Osaka, 1828, and 1833), 2 vols., 8vo (Burty Catalogue, No. 712).

Hasegawa Settan in Yedo also illustrated meishos, which appeared from 1832-39. The Yedo meisho of 1836, 20 vols., in black and white, is the finest of its kind (Anderson Catalogue, p. 364; Burty Catalogue, No. 438).

Other humorous illustrators of the school of Kioto are, according to Duret (Nos. 462-516): Kanyosai (Mokio), who lived from 1712-74 (see chap, iii., end). Kyaro, works by him of 1798 and 1799; Kuro (Kino Baitei) is the author of Kuro Gwafu, Kioto, 1797. Shimo Kawahe Jiusui followed Sukenobu's style; by him is Kummo zuye, an encyclopaedic work in 21 vols. (Kioto, 1789).

To the nineteenth century belong: Nichosai (Kotsijukai, Osaka, 1802, 2 vols.). Sato Sui Saki (work of 1814). Kishi (Aoi Sokiju).

2. Kunisada.—Besides Hokusai and his school, the first hair of of the nineteenth century was dominated by the school of Utagawa, which was called into being by Toyokuni. Its chief representative during the whole of this long period was Kunisada, who, perhaps even more than Hokusai himself, may be regarded as the typical master upon whose works was based the generally accepted European view of Japanese art. In his violently agitated figures, their big faces filled with exaggerated expression, in his variegated colouring, and his composition that is loth to leave the smallest corner unfilled, Europe thought to recognise the distinguishing characteristics of the art of Japan. It is true that, if we shut our eyes to all the clumsiness, crudeness, and exaggeration in his work, there still shine through it glimpses of the old grand style to which Hokusai had not been in equal measure unfaithful; but the falling-off is nevertheless so great that we can only call this new tendency, which entirely dominated Kunisada, the evidence of a rapid