Masters of Art - Katsushika Hokusai by Katsushika Hokusai

Author:Katsushika Hokusai [Hokusai, Katsushika]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Art History
ISBN: 9781788779876
Publisher: Delphi Classics
Published: 2019-02-03T05:00:00+00:00

HOKUSAI’S LIFE

IN the autumn of 1760, when Hogarth had just had his Sigismunda thrown on his hands by Sir Richard Grosvenor, a child was born in a humble suburb of Yedo whose place in the world’s art was destined to be at least no less important than that of the English painter of life and character. His parents were of the artisan class; the father a maker of metal mirrors to the court of the Shogun, the mother a member of a family that was not without celebrity in its time, but had lighted upon evil days. Her grandfather had been a retainer of the courtier Kira, in whose defence he had fallen by the hand of one of the forty-seven Ronins during the midnight attack which was the climax of that tragic episode of seventeenth-century Japan. The vassal’s family had been involved in the ruin that overtook the house of his master, so that in the next century it was not strange that his granddaughter should have married a workman. Perhaps to this soldier ancestor we may trace the pride and independence that characterised Hokusai all his life, just as the employment of his father — for Japanese mirrors are decorated on the back as well as polished on the face — might be supposed to influence the ‘ child’s tastes and capacity in the direction of art.

Possibly because he was not an only son, he left home when thirteen or fourteen to be apprenticed to an engraver. Though he did not remain at this trade for more than four years, the experience thus gained must have been exceedingly useful to him in after life, when he had to direct the men who were cutting his own work. Some letters on this point to his publishers are not without interest. In one, dated 1836, we read: “I warn the engraver not to add an eyeball underneath when I don’t draw one. As to the noses; these two noses are mine (here he draws a nose in front and in profile). Those they generally engrave are the noses of Utagawa (Toyokuni), which I do not like at all.” Several prints actually engraved by Hokusai are still preserved. At the age of eighteen he left this employment to join the school of the great designer, Shunsho, whose colour - prints are among the treasures of modern collectors, where he became an apt imitator of his master’s style. His originality, however, could not long be suppressed. An enthusiasm for the vigorous black and white work of the Kano school irritated the old professor, whose dainty art aimed at very different ideals. At last, in 1786, a quarrel over the painting of a shop sign resulted in the expulsion of the disobedient pupil. No doubt such an inquisitive, unconventional scholar must have sadly perplexed a master who had long been regarded, and quite rightly, as one of the leaders of the popular school. Yet in those eight years spent under Shunsho’s guidance the

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