Page:Japanese Wood Engravings.djvu/46

34 of women in a book called É-hon Biwa-ko, published in 1780, the illustrations to which were in black and white, but showed the influence of Katsuguwa Shunshō to a very marked degree. He was the master of one of the best of the broadside designers, Masanobu or Kioden, whose reputation as an artist, great as it was, has been eclipsed by his contributions to literature. Toriyama Sékiyen is little known, except by an interesting album of colour prints engraved by Riokō Tōyei, and a curious book descriptive of Japanese goblins, the Zokku hiak’ki (1779); lastly Utagawa Toyoharu, who may perhaps be regarded as the founder of the line that was destined to receive the mantle of the Katsugawas, devoted nearly the whole of his time to painting, and has left few colour prints.

The generation succeeding that of Shunshō was little less brilliant. It included Kitawo Masanobu, Kitagawa Utamaro, Hosoï Yeishi, Yeizan Utagawa Toyohiro, Utagawa Toyokuni, and Hokusai. Utagawa Toyohiro is best known as the artist of some of the romances of Bakin, an honour which he shared with Hokusai; but his chromoxylographs, although not numerous, were equal to those of Shunshō for delicacy of outline and subdued harmony of colour, and his engravings in black and white illustrating contemporary novels equal those of Hokusai, from the purely academic standpoint, but have less vigour and character (Fig. 22). Utagawa Toyokuni, the greatest artist of the school, was the designer of an enormous number of broadsides, theatrical and otherwise. His style in figure drawing passed through several changes, from an early type in which the subjects, usually actors, are represented with elongated limbs, sharp features, and extravagant action, to a series of the most elegant and delicately coloured portraitures, male and female, that have ever been produced in his school. He also illustrated many books, and with his death in 1828 commenced the decay of the “broadside” industry. Both Toyohiro and Toyokuni were fortunate in their pupils, the former in Hiroshigé, of whom we shall hear more, the latter in Kuniyasu, Kunisada, and Kuniyoshi, who rivalled their masters in industry and almost in genius. Kitawo Masanobu, better known as Kioden, was one of the most celebrated novelists of Japan, but the admirers of his chromoxylographic broadsides, all pictures of fair women, may well regret that his devotion to literature has robbed art of many precious works. His drawing was admirable in its grace of outline,