Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 7.djvu/72

RV 50 paper, and added embossing, which greatly increased the representative capabilities of the art. From his time no marked advance was made. None, indeed, was possible. There was elaboration, but no important innovation. In the same category with Harunobu stand a large school of brilliant artists, great in a pictorial as well as a decorative sense: Koriusai, Katsukawa Shunsho, Ippitsusai, Buncho, Katsukawa Shunyei, Utagawa Toyonobu, Utagawa Toyoharu, Kitao Shigemasa, Kubo Shunman, Torii Kiyonaga, Shuncho, Chobunsai, Yeishi, Kikugawa Utamaro, Utagawa Toyokuni, Hokusai, Hokkei, and Hiroshige. They cover a space from 1750 to 1850, just a century. As to which of them deserves to be placed on the throne of chromo-xylographic art, there are differences of opinion, but the honour certainly belongs to one of these four, Utamaro, Kiyonaga, Harunobu, and Koriusai. Some hold that everything culminated in Kiyonaga (1780–1795), that everything subsequent to him was a degeneration, and that everything good in contemporary or later art was due to his influence. But the longer the chromo-xylographs of Japan are studied and the wider the student's range of acquaintance with them, the more does Kikugawa Utamaro force himself into the first place, alike for vigour, for versatility, for tenderness, for truth of line, and for beauty of colour harmonies.

After Hiroshige, whose landscapes are among the finest pictures of the chromo-xylographic gallery, nothing good was produced. Indeed the era of decadence had set in long before Hiroshige designed his last prints (1855), though the end was postponed by several admirable artists. At one time (1842), and that not by any means the golden age of the art, the