Studio: international art (14.1898)

Photography and Colour-Printing in Japan

FIG. I.—CAST-IRON FIREPLACE DESIGNED BY C. R. ASHBEE

(See “An Experiment in Cast-Iron Work”)

publications of the Ko-
kwa. They are absolute
facsimiles, with no attempt
at restoration.

To the elaborate and
rather flat work of the
early painters, who were
strongly influenced by
China, the process is
somewhat akin, and the
reproduction of these, if
the colour happens to be
pale, and the whole in
good preservation, is com-
paratively easy. Its ren-
dering of the free brush-
work of the Kano and
Shijo Schools is con-
sidered its greatest
triumph, and here kinship
is less apparent, yet both
are the result of rapid,
comprehensive move-
ments of the brush, though
in the original the decision
of touch is due to the
genius of the painter, and
in the print we owe it to
the workman having no-
thing to think about but
the placing of his paint;
form and colour both
being decided by the more
skilful copyists who have worked before him. The
appearance of rapid impressionist painting is got by
thoroughly organised labour.

Mr. Ogawa told me that light primary and
secondary colours are easily copied, pale tertiaries,
such as occur in faded paper, are troublesome, and
so are dark, simple colours; but the real crux is in
dark, indescribable tones, such as Vandyke revelled
in but the early Japanese wood-block painters
entirely avoided. These require a number of
superimposed printings and are rarely satisfactory.

It is needless to say that these faultless copies
bear no resemblance to the old colour prints, in
which the colour scheme is a frank convention
carried out in five or seven printings, with textures
lent by the grain of the wood or the swish of the
brush.

Even in Japan, where such skilled labour as it
requires is cheaper than bricklaying, this new
process is costly. Allowing two minutes, which
was about the time the workman I observed took

for his half-dozen rapid motions, the printing alone
of ninety colours would take three hours for each
plate, and to this must be added the photographing,
collotyping and engraving, and the superintendence
of the skilled colourist, who, of course, does not
work for a bricklayer’s wage.

Another process Mr Ogawa uses boldly for
colour representations direct from nature. Whilst
the plates in the Ko-kwci are essentially wood-
block prints, though assisted by photography,
those in another book are collotype supplemented
by colour printing. The effect of collotype is well
preserved, but its combination with flat colour is,
so far as I have seen the results, not altogether
agreeable.

So far, in photography as in other sciences,
the zeal of the Japanese has found sufficient
scope in acquiring, in twenty years or thereabouts,
the results of centuries of European research.
We hear of no great discovery emanating from
the island empire, and indeed, so strong is the

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