Utagawa Kuniyoshi, born in 1798, was the best pupil of Toyokuni I, and an artist of more power than most of his contemporaries. His figures sometimes have dramatic force of a rather fine kind; but the majority of them are crude. His landscapes are his greatest claim to fame. Among them are some of extraordinary quality. They have hardly been sufficiently appreciated as yet by collectors. Kuniyoshi died in 1861.
KUNIYOSHI.
Katsukawa Shunsen, a pupil of Shunyei, produced, besides ordinary figure-prints, a few graceful landscapes, chiefly in tones of green and rose.
Hasegawa Sadanobu, who has been mentioned under the Osaka School, was an arrant imitator of Hiroshige. The Hayashi Catalogue, page 236, reproduces a print of his that is nothing more than a replica of one of Hiroshige's "Sixty-nine Province Series"; and the Victoria and Albert Museum Catalogue, Plate XLVI, shows a Lake Biwa print that copies Hiroshige's half-plate "Omi Hakkei" almost line for line.
Sadahide and Yoshiyuki, both Osaka artists, may be mentioned among the unimportant landscape designers of the second half of the nineteenth century.
To-day the old art of the colour-print is completely dead. But an entirely new school has produced some pleasing though weak designs of birds, flowers, and landscapes; and some attractive illustrated books have also been issued. The larger part of such work bears the obvious stamp of having been produced for the tourist and the foreign market, and has not a trace of that vigour and integrity which marked the prints of the great masters, whose inspiration sprang from and spoke to the heart of the Japanese people. European influence has produced a bad effect upon the style of these modern prints; and the weak colour used tends toward prettiness rather than toward beauty. It is idle to hope that real vitality will ever return to animate this lost art.