Page:The Surviving Works of Sharaku (1939).djvu/25

 ōban prints on mica grounds were followed by the more innocuous and less interesting aiban set with yellow grounds, but the persecution theories based on this fact are partially invalidated by a knowledge that the government prohibited the use of mica grounds at about the time when Sharaku ceased to use them, and that some of the prints in hosoye form which came between the ōban and the aiban certainly are satiric enough to make an Occidental feel that the actors portrayed in them would have been justified in resentment.

The matter is dwelt on at some length here because it is inevitable to seek explanations of the sudden cessation of work by an artist who seemed at the full maturity of his power. There are, however, plenty of possible causes; and unless someone finally succeeds in proving that Sharaku really died in 1801—six years after he stopped making prints, or really was dancing Nō for the Hachisuka family as late as 1825, the possibility of death or physical disability cannot be wholly set aside. The only fact that we can state which might be construed as evidence of unpopularity is that second editions of most, though not all, of the prints of Sharaku do not seem to have been demanded; but neither was there a demand for new printings of the actor portraits of Shunshō, Shunyei, or Toyokuni.

It seems unnecessary to attempt here any fresh appraisal of Sharaku as an artist. His place is secure; and those who do not wish to form their own conclusions are at liberty to read, if they are familiar only with European languages, the brilliant discussions of his quality by such critics as Laurence Binyon, Arthur Ficke and Louis Aubert; whereas if they read Japanese they can turn to the considerable literature on the subject that has sprung up in Japan since prints began to be well regarded there and since the master with whom we are concerned came to be known again in the country of his birth.

Among contemporary collections of Sharaku prints the largest is that of Mr. Kojiro Matsukata of Kobe which numbers seventy-four examples, four of which are duplicates, and the next in number is the Buckingham Collection now owned by the Art Institute of Chicago, which contains sixty-three. The third great Sharaku collection of the present time is that formed by John T. and the late William S. Spaulding which has fifty-one prints, and when these are brought, as they will be, to join the thirty-six already in the Museum of Fine Arts, and the eighteen resulting duplicates have been eliminated, the Boston collection will have sixty-nine.

Our exhibition has been drawn only from the private and public