Utamaro. Edmond de Goncourt

by Kiyonaga or Heishi. For the works related to the end of his career, collectors are troubled by the borrowings from the latter and the resulting loss of quality. When considering this disappearance of the artist’s original technique, they go so far as to wonder, in their more sceptical moments, if there was just one Utamaro or several.

      Utamaro must have had a good many imitators during his lifetime, whether they were trained under him or elsewhere, and there were undoubtedly many more after his death. Among them, the new husband of Utamaro’s wife figured prominently. After Utamaro’s death, she married one of his pupils, Koikawa Harumachi II, who took the name of Utamaro II and continued, under that name, to fill orders taken by the late artist. Many prints bearing the signature of the master, with unimaginative compositions, expressionless heads, and jarring colours came to be included in the work of Utamaro. One must not only deal with the prints of his widow’s husband and with the imitations which were being turned out during the peak of the artist’s popularity, leading him at one point to sign his prints as “the real Utamaro”, but one must also exclude a certain number of prints done in his own atelier by his pupils Kikumaro, Hidemaro, Takemaro and others, who had his permission to sign using his name. However, they were pale imitators and plagiarists.

      Yūgiri and Izaemon (Yūgiri Izaemon), from the series “Love Games with Musical Accompaniment” (Ongyoku koi no ayatsuri), 1801–1802. Ōban, nishiki-e, 37.3 × 25.3 cm. Staatliche Museen, Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Museum für Asiatische Kunst, Berlin.

      Ukiyo-e, the schools of Kanō and Tosa

      Utamaro has remained one of the most significant artists of the popular Japanese school, so poetically nicknamed “the floating world”: the Ukiyo, from Uki: that which floats above, or overhead; yo: world, life, contemporary time. This term originated during the Edo period (1605–1868) to designate woodblock prints as well as the popular narrative painting (-e: painting). As defined by James Jarvis, the art of Ukiyo-e* was a spiritual approach to reality and the natural conditions of daily life, communication with nature and the spirit of a lively and open-minded people, driven by a passionate appetite for art. The vigour and motivations of the Ukiyo-e* masters and the scope of their accomplishments are proof of it. The true story of Ukiyo-e*, according to Professor Ernest Fenollosa, is not the story of the technique of the block print, even though the block print was one of its most fascinating manifestations, but rather the aesthetic story of a particular form of expression.

      The arrival of the popular school of Ukiyo-e* was the culmination of an evolution that had taken place over more than a thousand years, and which, to be understood, requires that we retrace the centuries and review its stages of development. Although the origins of Japanese painting are obscure and clouded by tradition, there is no doubt that China and Korea were the direct sources from which Japan took its art; and yet they were influenced, of course, in less obvious ways by Persia and India, those sacred springs of oriental art and religion, moving forward in concert as they always do. One of the special features of Japanese art is that it was always dominated by the religious hierarchy and by temporal powers. From the very beginning, the school of Tosa owed its prestige to the emperor and his retinue of nobles, just as later, the school of Kanō became the official school of usurping shoguns.

      The history of painting in Japan, from the late fifth century until the eighteenth century, can be summed up in the succession of three schools. In the beginning was the Buddhist school, a school brought from the high plateaux of Asia, from wise India, which brought its painting, along with the religion of Shâkyamuni, to China, Japan, and the whole of the Far East. This painting represents the human being in a kind of sacred stasis, avoiding all imitation, refusing to produce portraits, representing the face according to an artistic ritual defined by systematised abbreviations, and concentrating essentially on the details and the richness of clothing.

      In China, the Ming dynasty (1368–1644) gave birth to an original style, which dominated the art of Japan for centuries. The ample calligraphy of Hokusai reveals this hereditary influence. His wood engravers, trained to follow the graceful, fluid lines of his work, which was so authentically Japanese, were occasionally disconcerted when he would suddenly veer towards a more angular realism. Two great artistic schools resulted: the school of Tosa and the school of Kanō. The Chinese and Buddhist schools dated back to the sixth century; the emperor of Japan, Heizei, founded the first imperial academy in 808.

      “Parody of a Monkey-Trainer” (Mitate saru-mawashi), from the series “Picture Siblings” (E-kyōdai), c. 1795–1796.

      Ōban, nishiki-e, 38.3 × 25.1 cm. The Japan Ukiyo-e Museum.

      Act Seven from Chūshingura (Chūshingura Shichi-damme), from the series “Chūshingura” (Chūshingura), 1801–1802.

      Ōban, nishiki-e, 36.4 × 25.1 cm. The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago.

      The Chūshingura Drama Parodied by Famous Beauties (Kōmei bijin mitate Chūshingura). Ōban, nishiki-e, 38 × 25.5 cm. Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris.

      This academy, along with the school of Yamato-e established by Fujiwara Motomitsu in the eleventh century, led to the renowned school of Tosa which, with that of Kanō, its august and aristocratic rival, kept an uncontested supremacy for centuries, until at last they came to be challenged by the plebeian school of Ukiyo-e*, inspired by the lower classes of Japan.

      The school of Tosa was created during the feudal period by a member of the illustrious Fujiwara family, who was vice-governor of the province of Tosa. The school of Tosa represented, in a refined style of aristocratic art, the life of the nobility, both in battle and in amorous and artistic intimacy in the yashiki*, and a revealing specimen of which is the illustration of the love story of The Tale of Genji (Genji Monogatari), written by the woman poet, Murasaki Shikibu. The artists of the school of Tosa used very fine, pointed brushes and brought out the brilliance of their colours against backgrounds resplendent with gold leaf. It is also to this school of intricate designs and microscopic details that we owe those gilded lacquer objects and screens, the richness and beauty of which have never been surpassed.

      The school of Tosa has been described as the “manifestation of an ardent faith, through the purity of an ethereal style”, but in fact it was the embodiment of the taste of the Kyōto court and was put at the service of the aristocracy. It was the reflection of the esoteric mystery of Shinto and the sacred entourage of the emperor. The ritual of the court, its celebrations and religious ceremonies, the dances in which the daimyos* took part, dressed in ceremonial costumes falling in heavy, harmonious folds, were depicted with a consummate elegance and a delicacy of touch, betraying in no uncertain terms a familiarity with the arcane methods of the Persian miniature.

      The style of the school of Tosa was driven out by the growing Chinese influence, which reached its peak in the fourteenth century, owing to the rival school of Kanō, created by Kanō Masanobu (c. 1434-c. 1530). The origins of this school went back to China. At the end of the fourteenth century, the Chinese Buddhist priest, Josetsu, left his land and set out for Japan, taking with him the Chinese tradition. He founded a new dynasty, the descendants of which still represent the most illustrious tradition in Japanese painting. The school of Kanō constituted a bastion of classicism, which in Japan means, above all, holding to the Chinese models and to a traditional technique, avoiding subjects inspired by daily life. Whereas the school of Kanō absorbed the Chinese influence, the school of Tosa fought against it, thus tending towards an exclusively national art.

      Chinese calligraphy is the basis for the technique of the school of Kanō. The Japanese brush stroke follows the Chinese calligraphic tradition, where dexterity, required by these audacious and incisive lines, gives the written sign an effect of drapery or breaks it down into abstract components. The school of Kanō is the school of daring innovation and technical bravura, with the brush pressed wide, with the fineness of a single bristle, with flourishes of the stroke, with the execution which in Japanese is called gaunter, rocky, chopped, rough,