Page:A history of Japanese colour-prints by Woldemar von Seidlitz.djvu/259

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THE POLYCHROME PRINT
115

Fenollosa (Outline, pl. ix.) reproduces the picture of an actor of about 1772.

Reproductions of drawings by Buncho were given in the Buncho Sensei Gwafu (Yedo, 1816), black with some colour.

His pupil was Kincho Sekiga (illustration in Hayashi Catalogue, No. 477).

(Uta­) (gawa ) (Toyo ) (haru)Utagawa Toyoharu lived from 1733 to 1814, and began work towards the end of the sixties.[1] He was a pupil of Shigenaga, and, according to Fenollosa (Catalogue, No. 171), a brother of the gifted Utagawa Toyonobu, who worked in the early seventies, but died young, so that his work has become very rare; on the other hand, the Hayashi Catalogue, which reproduces one of Toyonobu's prints (No. 1017), is of opinion that he is identical with Toyoharu, whose youthful period he in that case represents. Toyoharu's ordinary name was Tajimaya Shozabro, and he also signed himself Ichiriusai. His prints, especially of the early period, are very rare. His second style began about 1773, but after 1776 he produced but little. A delicately strung nature, he shrank from competition with the newly arisen style of Kiyonaga, and, like Shunsho, devoted himself principally to painting from the eighties onward. At the same time, he possessed, in contrast to Buncho's pronouncedly decorative talent, a most sensitive and individual gift, in virtue of which he became the founder of a special clan of artists, that of the Utagawas, which was destined to take the lead in place of the Katsukawa clan. Fenollosa (Review, p. 42) is right in inclining to put him even above Shunsho in genius. The designs for the Months, done in collaboration with Shunsho, have already been mentioned. Besides this, one of his most beautiful series is that consisting of four sheets representing the Perfections. One

  1. Fenollosa Cat., Nos. 173-177; Anderson Cat., p. 347. The biographical dates are taken from the Hayashi Cat. (my first edition made him reach the age of sixty-nine years).