The colour-prints of Japan : an appreciation and history / by Edward F. Strange.

  • Edward Fairbrother Strange
Date:
1904
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The colour-prints of Japan : an appreciation and history / by Edward F. Strange. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    27/136 page 9
    SOCIAL CONDITIONS The colour-print makers, then, were artisans : their patrons mainly of similar low degree. They affected the styles of one of the Schools of Painting, that called Kano for the most part; and kept up a tradition of master and pupil for all the world like their great models. After all, they were painters. They prided themselves more on their paintings than on their colour-prints—the necessary pot- boiling of the class. And the school in which they are placed by the Japanese Included more than one of artistic distinction who never worked for the print-sellers. To this is given the name of Ukiyo- ye, “ Mirror of the Passing World.” An easy explanation of this title, and of the low estimation, in Japan, of its holder, is to be found. The painter of the great schools of Japan is essen- tially a symbolist. Everything he does conveys some subtle allusion or imagery. Realism, in his eyes, is unintellectual vulgarity. And when this new school arose, devoting itself to the common life of everyday people of low social standing, either without poetic suggestion altogether, or only with such as savoured of looseness or even immorality, it was inevitable that it should be absolutely tabooed by all of good taste. In one of the most rigid
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