Impressions of Ukiyo-E. Dora Amsden
by Okyo. Kuwannon, the Compassionate, sits in contemplation beside the descending stream of life.”
About 1775 arose a legitimate successor to the school of Torii in the adopted son of Torii Kiyomitsu, Kiyonaga. He discarded the theatrical tradition of his school, but the boldness of his drawing was foreign to the style of Harunobu. “His brush had a superhuman power and swing.” He rivalled the three great masters, Isoda Koryūsai, Kitao Shigemasa, founder of Kitao, and Utagawa Toyoharu, and the masters of Ukiyo-e, forsaking their individual predilections, flocked to his studio.
The simplicity and dignity of the early Italian masters, sought after and adored by the pre-Raphaelite brotherhood, their noble lines and contours, are again realised in the panels of Kiyonaga. Professor Fenollosa said that “classic” is the instinctive term to apply to Kiyonaga, and that his figures at their best may be placed side by side with Greek vase painting. Ideally beautiful is the fall of his drapery, determining the lines of the figure in the fewest possible folds. In indoor scenes he almost rivalled Harunobu, but he loved best to paint in the open air. In imagination we see Kiyonaga, the lover of beauty, gazing at the wealth of lotus blooms which fill the moats of feudal Edo, and in the crucible of his fancy transmuting them into the forms of women. The lotus, of all flowers, has the deepest art significance, and is the oldest motif. The author of Greek Lines, Henry Van Brunt, said: “The lotus perpetually occurs in oriental mythology as the sublime and hallowed symbol of the productive power of nature. The Hindu and the Egyptian instinctively elevated it to the highest and most cherished place in their Pantheons.”
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