Perfect condition conveys to us perfectly the artist's conception; anything else obliterates or modifies his design. Though the beauty of faded or damaged prints is often indisputable, and though some prints are so saturated with beauty that a certain charm remains as long as any trace of the printing is visible, yet these wrecks and fragments are not the desirable specimens. The slight softening of the colours that almost always comes with age is perhaps not detrimental; but when the luminosity of the colours and the brilliant whiteness of the paper is gone, an irreparable loss has been suffered. For the white spaces and the reflective effect of the white fibres under the coloured spaces were integral and vital elements in the artist's design; and one cannot say that this is not injured when the paper has been turned to a dingy brown.
Further, it is almost childish to prefer the time-changed colours to the fresh ones. For surely, if these prints have any value at all, it is not the kind of value that beautifully weather-marked pebbles have: their significance lies in whatsoever spiritual values their designers put into them. They are not curiosities of nature, but monuments erected by the human spirit in its search for beauty. We go very far astray when we admire what is in fact lamentable disintegration. To delight in the faded tone of a print is like delighting in the cracks of the Sistine Chapel.
The matter can be made clearer if we become specific. A certain blue of Harunobu's changes, with exposure, to yellow; and the yellow sky or river that results is anything but what the designer intended. A certain white of Hiroshige's oxidizes into black; the effect is unfortunate as, for instance in prints where we now see black snowflakes. The rich orange beloved of Koriusai and Shunsho, and the delicate pink used by Harunobu, Kiyonaga, and Shuncho, are transformed in the course of time into rusty black; then in the place of the luminous rooms intended when the artist planned his composition, we see dingy mottled caverns of mud. The brilliant early purple turns brown; the still earlier rose colour vanishes entirely. After all these changes, how is it possible to prefer the faded print to the fresh one? The resulting accidental effects may happen to be beautiful, but they have a destructive influence upon those elements which alone make the prints worthy of our serious attention as works of art. The only marvel is that they do not more completely ruin the beauty of the artist's work.
The chemical disintegrations of which I speak are sometimes so great that they are very misleading to the uninformed. A writer in the London Times of November 6, 1913, reviewing the exhibition at the Albert and Victoria Museum, discovers an amazing mare's nest. "One colour alone Harunobu neglects in common with all his predecessors and contemporaries," he says. "It remained for the artists of the nineteenth century to discover the possibilities of blue—a curious and hitherto unnoted omission." Indeed, the omission had not been previously noted—for the simple reason that it does not exist. Harunobu used blue a great deal, almost always in depicting water or sky; Shunsho used it repeatedly for sky, water, and draperies in the "Ise Monogatari," and as a solid background in certain hoso-ye actor-prints of which two, in their startling pristine brilliancy, are in the Gookin Collection; Koriusai used blue frequently in combination with his famous orange. But the blue used by the early artists, particularly that of Harunobu and Shunsho, was the most unstable of colours, and it is rare to find it unaltered by time. Generally it has turned to a delicate grey or yellow that is very beautiful, but very far from what the artist meant it to be.
A systematic classification of the various conditions in which a print may be found will perhaps put the matter clearly before the beginner:—
1. Publisher's State.—Without the slightest evidence of any change since the hour it was printed; colours unaltered; paper absolutely new and sparkling.
2. Collector's State.—As a print might be after a few years in the possession of a careful purchaser; perfect, except for having been mounted or washed, or except for slight chemical change in the colours due to time only and not to damage; paper white and clear.
3. Good State.—Marred only by minor defects that would be unnoticeable to casual observation—small worm-holes, slight tears or creases, moderate fading of colours, or slightly rubbed surface; paper toned but not brown.
4. Ordinary State.—Still retaining its chief beauty in spite of noticeable injury by tears, small stains, worn or faded colours, or other damage; paper somewhat browned by exposure.
5. Defective State.—Such injuries or colour changes as deprive the print of its significance as a thing of beauty; paper browned or stained.