Kitao Masanobu.
Two Women.
What floors have ye trod? What sky-paven places have opened their halls to your eyes?
What light was yours, through summerward spaces watching the swallow that flies?
What holy silence has touched your faces—what hush of paradise?
I think that he died of a longing unspoken who dreamed you to walk in our ways.
The wheel at the cistern, the pitcher is broken: ye wot not that dust decays—
Ye, torn from the heart of the dreamer as token to dreamers of other days.
Kitao Masanobu was another of the pupils of Shigemasa who marched eventually beneath the banner of Kiyonaga, though he retained to the last much of his first master's manner. Born in 1761, he lived until 1816. His occupations besides painting were various: he kept a tobacco-shop, and was best known in his own day under the literary name of Kyōden, for his highly popular novels and comic poems. He produced very few prints, but those few are of distinguished quality, all of them probably the product of his early years, before he reached the age of thirty. At least one of these, reproduced in [Plate 31], is an unsurpassable triumph. His resemblance to his first master is so marked that it is not always possible at first glance to distinguish his prints from those of Shigemasa. In fact there is a certain unsigned pillar-print, representing the two lovers Komurasaki and Gompachi, which is still of doubtful authorship, some authorities attributing it to Shigemasa, while others assign it to Masanobu.
MASANOBU (KITAO).
Possibly Kitao Masanobu is most widely known for his elaborate illustrated book, "Celebrated Women of the Tea Houses and their Handwritings." This volume was published about 1780; I have already referred to it in dealing with the great illustrated book of Shunsho and Shigemasa. It consists of seven large double-page illustrations in many colours, and is a highly praised work, sheets of which are often mounted as separate prints. It appears to me, however, to have been overrated; and my impression is that in these designs elaborateness has smothered composition and richness has obliterated beauty.
Kitao Masanobu's single-sheet prints are lamentably few, as are also his pillar-prints; but from those that remain to us it is possible to rank Masanobu as an artist second to only the very greatest. Spirituality is a clumsy word to use in describing work so definitely embodied as this; yet none other conveys the sense of his peculiar and grave harmony. The mature beauty of his work carries us back to the perfection of Shigemasa.
The collector will search long before he finds an important print by this artist to add to his collection.