Page:A history of Japanese colour-prints by Woldemar von Seidlitz.djvu/376

 About 1827 appeared the waterfalls, Shokoku takimeguri, eight sheets, vertical, and 1827-30, the bridges, Shokoku meiko kiran, eleven sheets, oblong, similar in execution to the thirty-six views of Fuji. Lastly, in 1834-35, he published his Hundred Views of Fuji, the smaller work printed in black and white (in the second edition a light blue tone is added), which, while it is inferior in creative power to the thirty-six views produced ten years earlier, contributed by its amazing wealth of invention almost as much to the popularity of the master as did the Mangwa. He also executed some landscapes in the "Dutch" (European) taste.

Toward the close of the twenties he returned with fresh vigour to book-illustration. We have of this time an excellently printed erotic work: Kinoye no Komatsu, the Young Pines, in three medium-sized volumes; then the Yehin teikinorai, Illustrated Correspondence about the Family Garden, an educational system, in three medium-sized volumes, one of his most beautiful works, 1828; further, the five thrilling sheets of apparitions, entitled Hiaku monogatari, the Hundred Tales, of 1830; of about the same time, the ten large sheets, Shika shasbinkio, Pictures of Poets, excellent and very rare (Goncourt, p. 185 ff.); five sheets of animals, signed Hokusai Iitsu (Goncourt, p. 188), the ten large flower pictures, in oblong form, excellent in style (Goncourt, p. 190), ten somewhat smaller sheets with flowers; further the cock, hen, and chickens, one of the largest known colour-prints, 45 cm. in height and 60 cm. in breadth (in Bing's Coll.), and in similar style the No-dance (Vever Coll.), 40 cm. by 51 cm., and the kakemono with the pyramidally arranged street-dancers (in the same collection).

In his best style is his Toshisen Yehon of 1833 (and 1836), the illustrated poems of the Tang period, in black and white; from 1835 dates the Yehon Kokio, Filial Love, two medium-sized