Impressions of Ukiyo-ye, the school of the Japanese colour-print artists by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Color prints, Japanese, Wood-engraving -- Japan History
Publisher: San Francisco, P. Elder and company

IMPRESSIONS OF UKIYO-YE

groping of the larvae, in the lighting of his path by the

glow-worm, and he ends by disentangling the end of the

, f , • i • i it Utamaro.

thread or the spider s web.

The colour-printing of these insects is a miracle of art, says M. de Goncourt, and there is nothing comparable to it in Europe. Of the methods by which these colour prints are brought to such a height of perfection, it is almost impossible to speak authoritatively. They are the result of a threefold combination: of a paper marvellously prepared from the bark of the shrub, ATozo, diluted with the milk of rice flour and a gummy decoction extracted from the roots of the hydrangea and hibiscus ; of dyes, into the secret of whose alchemy no modern artist can penetrate, it being safe to say the early n Tan-ye n and " Beni-ye" prints can never be reproduced; of the application of those colours by the master engraver's finger — that wizard hand of the Orient into whose finger-tips are distilled the mysteries of bygone centuries. A portion of the colour by means of this calculated pressure is drunk, absorbed into the paper, and only the transparency is left vibrating upon the fibres, like colour beneath the glaze.

The " Catalogue Raisonne" of M. de Goncourt is a prose masterpiece. His descriptive touches, like pastels set in jewels, captivate the imagination. Through him we see the albums, the fans, the kakemonos, the surimonos. Oh, the prints, with their wondrous backgrounds, the delight of Utamaro! Sometimes straw-yellow, the uniformity broken with clouds of ground mica; sometimes gray in tint, like the traces of receding waves upon the beach. Some silvered backgrounds throw moonlight reflections upon the figures; some are sombre, bizarre — all are marvellous bevond words. And the colours! we cannot define them in

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