DOI Heft:
No. 67 (October 1898)
DOI Artikel:Anderson, William: A japanese artist, Kawanabé Kiōsai
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.19230#0043
Kawanabd Kiosai
FROM A COLOUR PRINT IN THE " KIOSAI RAKU-GVVA " BY KAWANABE KIOSAI
JAPANESE ARTIST, KAWA-
NABE KIOSAI. BY PROFES-
SOR WILLIAM ANDERSON.
Were we asked to name the agencies
that are doing most to fashion the nascent art
instincts amongst the millions the answer need not
be far to seek. The great painter or sculptor
strives rather in the interests of posterity than
for his own time, and it is his best reward
to feel that he may furnish models for the
guidance of generations to come ; but it is the book
illustrator and the designer of picture-posters who
have the grip of the present. It is they who can
boast the great privilege of educating the eye of
the man in the street and of making him learn the
lessons of form and colour at home or abroad,
almost in spite of himself, and to recognise the
difference between good art and bad, even though
in his inner soul he prefer the worse.
In our study of things Japanese, although
ceramic and lacquer ware and bronzes and netsukes
have been long and duly appreciated, it is but
lately that we have glanced at the popular side of
the art of the Far East that deals with the picture
book and the broadside ; but we have at last begun
to realise how much a century of artisan designers
and engravers has done for the personal culture
and commercial prosperity of a race that is now an
important factor in the making of History.
Hokusai, "The Ancient of a Hundred Centuries,"
who spent a long life of needy obscurity—of obscurity
at least in so far as " the Classes " amongst his people
were concerned—to bequeath a splendid legacy of
honest work, has been made famous through the
whole of Christendom by foreign pens, and he
has become for the outer world a more important
personage than either Hideyoshi, or Iy£yasu, the
stars of his country's feudal glory. Yet Hokusai in
his own sphere and calling was but one of a group
of men, many of whom are almost as worthy of
fame as he. His first master, Katsugawa Shunsho;
his contemporaries, Toyohiro, Toyokuni, Utamaro,
Yeishi, Hiroshige, and many more, deserve high
recognition; but amongst his successors there is
one and one only who stands pre-eminent in the
same line of labour—Kawanabe Kiosai—as poor, as
eccentric, and almost as gifted as Hokusai himself,
29
FROM A COLOUR PRINT IN THE " KIOSAI RAKU-GVVA " BY KAWANABE KIOSAI
JAPANESE ARTIST, KAWA-
NABE KIOSAI. BY PROFES-
SOR WILLIAM ANDERSON.
Were we asked to name the agencies
that are doing most to fashion the nascent art
instincts amongst the millions the answer need not
be far to seek. The great painter or sculptor
strives rather in the interests of posterity than
for his own time, and it is his best reward
to feel that he may furnish models for the
guidance of generations to come ; but it is the book
illustrator and the designer of picture-posters who
have the grip of the present. It is they who can
boast the great privilege of educating the eye of
the man in the street and of making him learn the
lessons of form and colour at home or abroad,
almost in spite of himself, and to recognise the
difference between good art and bad, even though
in his inner soul he prefer the worse.
In our study of things Japanese, although
ceramic and lacquer ware and bronzes and netsukes
have been long and duly appreciated, it is but
lately that we have glanced at the popular side of
the art of the Far East that deals with the picture
book and the broadside ; but we have at last begun
to realise how much a century of artisan designers
and engravers has done for the personal culture
and commercial prosperity of a race that is now an
important factor in the making of History.
Hokusai, "The Ancient of a Hundred Centuries,"
who spent a long life of needy obscurity—of obscurity
at least in so far as " the Classes " amongst his people
were concerned—to bequeath a splendid legacy of
honest work, has been made famous through the
whole of Christendom by foreign pens, and he
has become for the outer world a more important
personage than either Hideyoshi, or Iy£yasu, the
stars of his country's feudal glory. Yet Hokusai in
his own sphere and calling was but one of a group
of men, many of whom are almost as worthy of
fame as he. His first master, Katsugawa Shunsho;
his contemporaries, Toyohiro, Toyokuni, Utamaro,
Yeishi, Hiroshige, and many more, deserve high
recognition; but amongst his successors there is
one and one only who stands pre-eminent in the
same line of labour—Kawanabe Kiosai—as poor, as
eccentric, and almost as gifted as Hokusai himself,
29