Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1906-03-17
ARTISTS Of NIPPON.
Japanese Landscapes by Fa-
nous PrInt-Makers.
SKETCHES BY HlRosHlGE |
M the Noyes Collection at Library Of
Congress.
SOME NOTABLE PICTURES
Simplicity Of Expression is charac-
teristic Of the Prints-Paintsrs
Were NEUTRALITY-SUSPICIOUS..
SKETCHES BY HlRosHloE |
N the Noyes Collection at Library Of
[E NOTABLE PICTURES

| It has been called the "short hand of
| art" and yet It has arrived at very ade-
Quats expression. Perhaps no other branch
OF Japanese art is commonly as little under
stood, and YET mono. II may be safely said,
has exsrtsd a wider influence upon the art
| OF our own land
| The first Ulsioye artist who attempted to
make landscape Interpretation a separate
branch was Utagawa Toyoharu, who had
seen and studied some old European wood
out brought In through the little Dutch
colony OF NaBasaki and conceived the idea
in about ITO. of rendering his own country
| IN like manner. OF course he had follow
ers and the initial attempts were both curl
Gus and amusing. The clouds one writer
Gays. were apparently held up by wires
the foilage was exceedingly queer, and the
street vistas dived headlong beneath the
startled horizons. But the men were on the
right track and they persevered.
Toyoharu had famous pupil, Toyofiro
who continued his experiments with good
results, and was In turn the teacher of
Hiroshige. who is now numbered with the
worlds great artists.
passion for travel developed among
the Japanese people toward the end of the
eighteenth century, and this added an i'm
petus to landscape work. Guide books In
great numbers were called into existence
and pictures Of far away places were
| carried home by visitors as souvenirs to
their 1r1endS. Inc outdoor world has al
ways strongly appealed to the Japanese
people. Their great festivals are the
periods of blossoming; their songs and
poems are chiefly inspired by the beauties
OF nature; and environment with them,
has played large part In the molding of
ethics. And yet. curiously enough. the
| Japanese have never attempted to accurate
ly copy nature-they have never Transcribed
g. scene with the realism of western
painters
Object Has Raen Tn Tnternret
An English landscape painter was known
to keep pair OF opera glasses on hand
| through the large ends of which he invited
his patrons to examine his works; and a
! Frenchman Is said to have declared that
| any OF his canvases might be mistaken
! for view from a window but all this is
| far removed from Japanese ideals. The
object Of the Nippon artists has been from
the first to interpret rather than transcribe
They have made pictorial mays of places
| and for the sake of clearness they have
eliminated ell non-essential elements. They
| are the briefest statements, but the most
! complete results. "A SKETCH" Mr.. John
La Fargo has said. lis the nearest approach
| to the highest finished work." meaning
| that 1t requires an equal measure of skill
and conveys no less significance. All Of the
| Japanese landscapes are literally sketches,
| and yet all seem to have been carried to
| satisfactory conclusion.
| Doubtless in print-making the process has
| enforced simplicity OF expression, but
| where the artists had the freedom Of the
brush no greater elaboration of treatment
1 is seen. In their landscapes, as in the
| other branches Of their art. they were liter
| alfsts reaching up to the ideal They rem
/ dered facts with sober seriousness. believing
| that they alone would proclaim the truth
Given the essential items the observer was
| accredited with sufficient intellect and i'm
| agination to reconstruct the scene. They
| were NEUTRALITY-SUSPICIOUS., but they never
| let sentiment run away with them. Like
| their story pictures their landscapes were
| set forth with childish simplicity, and yet
| they exhibit TO trained eyes the consumma-
| ton Of artistic skill The japanese eyes
caught accurately the flight OF a bird before
| instantaneous photography came to help
| them, and they discovered what might be
| called the grammar of landscape without
| knowing that they were in any sense p.o-
neers.
Works Frequently Emotional.
| with all their liberalism the japanese
| print-makers did not, however become
| merely mundane. Their works are fire.
| quently emotional and characterized by
keen artistic feeling with his simple
masses of color" Mr.. Strange has said.
| This arbitrary selection of line. his naive
| formula for light and shade. the color print
| artist is yet able to convince you lrresistibly
! of the poetic truth of his thought. You see
| the wind rolling in waves over grain
| field-the tenderness of evening light fading
| behind a line OF distant hills-the great cone
| of Full rising like a strong prayer above
| the busy town-the river at night with Its
| dim boats and the twinkle of innumerable
| lanterns on the bridge. You see all these
| things-juggled IL you will-openly before
| your eyes-and then may we'll ask II our
| landscape painters, with their laborious
| technique and infinite knowledge. can give
| you half the truth and poetry of these sim
| pie woodcuts, wrought by artisans who
| only understood their own powers and did
| not try to go beyond them"
| yrharc ia sonnet hing pecuiaFly fascinating
about the simplicity of the Japanese land
scape prints; something keenly delightful
about their unequivocal utterance. Amer
| leans may not prefer them to our own
landscape renderings. but we can learn
from them and must grant them merit.
The greatest exponent of the landscape
| school in Japan-at least among the Ukoye
| makers-was Hiroshige I (so-called to dis
tinguish him from his two pupils who
adopted his name1, who lived between the
years 1896 and 1858. At the age of ten he
only fifteen determined to adopt art as a
profession. After studying for several
years under Toyohiro he started out for
himself, and making failure of the the
atrical style removed to Kyoto and pub
lished a set of views of the old capital of
the mfkado. This established his reputa-
ton and he returned TO Yedo with assured
success and a field of work almost exclu-
siveIy his own. With a few excursions
into earieatrre he gave his entire time to
landscape work from then until his death
With Rokusai he shares the highest honors
Of his individual school
Sketches by Hiroshige I.
The Moves collection is specially rich in
works by this eminent artist. and there are
now on exhibition at the Library OF Con-
gress some excellent examples of his skill
The set of Views on the Tokaldo," that
remarkable road from Yedo to Kyoto along
which the life of Japan used to pass I'm
the old days before the railroad, is perhaps
the most famous. but many of the Scenes
in Yedo" are quite as notable, and his book
illustrations are unriyaled in their charm
1t Is hard to describe these prints and
pictures; they are so simple and at the
same time so individual. There is no at
tempt at naturalistic coloring, and yet the
sefnblance of truth Is given. Few tints are
used, and these are rather somber, but the
story. in spite of this, is accurately told
1t has been said that Japanese print-makers
/, had knowledge OF linear perspective or
light and shade, but both are employed TO
a degree, intelllgently, in Hiroshige's land
! scapes. Some have. 1t IS true, been repre-
scented from ali odd viewpoint-from high
| places, for example. or from beneath a
/ hrfHpA-hi.f NIL arc ysnsSihla and ShDu avcaI-