Impressions of Ukiyo-E. Dora Amsden

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      So it was also with Okyo. He breathed the breath of life into his pictures. His animals live, and his flights of storks swoop across the great kakemonos, each bird with an individuality of its own, though one of a multitude of flying companions. To view Okyo correctly, we should see him at home in his own environment, not in Europe, where so many copies of his masterpieces abounded. John La Farge gave us a glimpse of an Okyo, fitly set, framed in oriental magnificence, in the Temple of Iyemitsu at Nikko: “All within was quiet, in a golden splendour. Through the small openings of the black and gold gratings a faint light from below left all the golden interior in a summer shade, within which glittered on golden tables the golden utensils of the Buddhist ceremonial. The narrow passage makes the centre, through whose returning walls project, in a curious refinement of invention, the golden eaves of the inner building beyond. Gratings, which were carved, and gilded trellises of exquisite design, gave a cool, uncertain light. An exquisite feeling of gentle solemnity filled the place. In the corridor facing the mountain and the tomb, a picture hangs on the wall. It is by Okyo. Kuwannon, the Compassionate, sits in contemplation beside the descending stream of life.”

      About 1775 arose a legitimate successor to the school of Torii in the adopted son of Torii Kiyomitsu, Kiyonaga. He discarded the theatrical tradition of his school, but the boldness of his drawing was foreign to the style of Harunobu. “His brush had a superhuman power and swing.” He rivalled the three great masters, Isoda Koryūsai, Kitao Shigemasa, founder of Kitao, and Utagawa Toyoharu, and the masters of Ukiyo-e, forsaking their individual predilections, flocked to his studio.

      The simplicity and dignity of the early Italian masters, sought after and adored by the pre-Raphaelite brotherhood, their noble lines and contours, are again realised in the panels of Kiyonaga. Professor Fenollosa said that “classic” is the instinctive term to apply to Kiyonaga, and that his figures at their best may be placed side by side with Greek vase painting. Ideally beautiful is the fall of his drapery, determining the lines of the figure in the fewest possible folds. In indoor scenes he almost rivalled Harunobu, but he loved best to paint in the open air. In imagination we see Kiyonaga, the lover of beauty, gazing at the wealth of lotus blooms which fill the moats of feudal Edo, and in the crucible of his fancy transmuting them into the forms of women. The lotus, of all flowers, has the deepest art significance, and is the oldest motif. The author of Greek Lines, Henry Van Brunt, said: “The lotus perpetually occurs in oriental mythology as the sublime and hallowed symbol of the productive power of nature. The Hindu and the Egyptian instinctively elevated it to the highest and most cherished place in their Pantheons.”