Page:A history of Japanese colour-prints by Woldemar von Seidlitz.djvu/172

 coloured wood-engravings were at their highest perfection and circulated everywhere, that Masanobu, who had begun to work for wood-engraving about the same time as Kiyonobu, broke off this activity and devoted himself almost wholly to painting. At this time, too, the hair coiffure, after abandoning its elaborate style of the seventeenth century, and gradually becoming flatter and flatter, had changed yet again to continually squarer shapes distinguished only by a long flat queue.

According to Japanese custom, Kiyonobu's pupils adopted a part of his surname, which they completed by an additional syllable. Among these, Kiyotada was the most conspicuous. He began to work as early as 1720, but his activity ceased long before that of his master; for this reason his works are particularly rare. An illustration in the Hayashi Catalogue (No. 219) rather reminds one of Masanobu. In the Tokio Catalogue (p. 33) thirty-three of his pictures are enumerated, varying in date from about 1714 to 1736. Perhaps he was a son of Kiyonobu.

Together with Kiyonobu I., Kiyomasu is generally spoken of as the second great master of this school. As he was born about 1679, he cannot have been a son of Kiyonobu, as was formerly supposed; rather he may have been his brother, as Fenollosa assumes. He is said to have died as late as 1763, and according to this account must have witnessed the activity of Kiyonobu II. (see below). A play-bill by him bears the early date 1693. Illustrated books by him appeared in 1703 (Kioto), and again in 1712 (Yedo), 1729, and 1747. The Tokio Catalogue (No. 37 seqq.) mentions sheets by him which are assigned to about 1711 and 1713; and one of these, in the judgment of Fenollosa, shows a distinction of draughtsmanship which may be sought for in vain among the works of Moronobu, and a sense of life which surpasses Kwaigetsudo.