Studio: international art (15.1899)

Kcvwanabd Kiosai

but unhappily denied both the industry and the Kawanabe Kiosai, born of a poor family in
longevity of the master. It is of this artist we have May 1831, is said to have manifested his passion
now to speak. for art at a very early age, and since art as a calling

As with so many men of talent who perforce for the artisan was then neither better nor worse than
lived their lives on the wrong side of the almost another, he was permitted to follow his bent and
impenetrable barrier that separated the trading and to join the school of Utagawa Kuniyoshi, one of
artisan orders of old Japan from the privileged the leading broadside draughtsmen of the time,
ranks of the military and official caste, there is From this teaching he subsequently passed to that
little record as to the history of Ki5sai. Nearly all of Kano Tohaku, the scion of a degenerating line
that we have by way of biography comes from a of once famous patrician artists ; but whatever
gossiping reminiscence left by his own pen, and influence these men exercised upon his early essays,
even this would scarcely have reached us save for it is little apparent in his matured work, which
a brief but sympathetic in memoriam notice written bears more resemblance to that of Hanabusa Itcho *
in the Japan Daily Mail by an Englishman who and of Hokusai than to the productions of any of
was fortunate in knowing and appreciating the the men who surrounded him. He had, moreover,
wayward artist been strongly impressed by the theories of the

naturalistic school of
Okio,t and a few anec-
dotes are told as to his
early realistic tendencies;
but most of these, like
similar stories attached to
the names of the most con-
ventional of the old pain-
ters, are of little value in
showing the character or
capabilities of the future
artist. Like Okio himself,
he was naturalistic only up
to a certain point. In his
drawings of certain forms
of animal life, especially of
birds, fishes, and reptiles,
his study of detail was
often conscientious to a
remarkable degree, and
even in the roughest
sketches his aptitude for
conveying in a few masterly
strokes the impress of living
energy and momentary
action was marvellous.
Sketches of his life-school,
published in one of his

* Hanabusa Itcho, an artist
originally trained in the Kano
school, who became famous for
numerous popular sketches at a
time when the classical art was
still all powerful, though enter-
ing its decadence.

t The founder of the natura-
listic school of Japanese art—a
commoner, outside the Samurai

kiosai's life-school from a drawing by kiosai class, like Hokusai and Kiosai.

3°