KWAIGETSUDŌ: COURTESAN ARRANGING HER COIFFURE.
Black and white. Size 24½ × 12.
Signed Nippon Kigwa Kwaigetsu Matsuyo Norishige.
Spaulding Collection.
Plate 3.
The Kwaigetsudō reproduced in [Plate 3] exhibits these qualities. The body is merely suggested, but with complete effectiveness, under the great swirls of the robes. The dominance of the main curves, the vigour of the blacks, and the importunate life that vitalizes every touch and line, give Kwaigetsudō a place as high as the greatest contemporaries or successors.
All the Kwaigetsudō work was printed in black and white; sometimes the print was hand-coloured by the application of spots of tan, or red lead. Excellent full-size reproductions of several of them are obtainable. With these reproductions the ordinary collector will be obliged to content himself, for the whole number of Kwaigetsudō prints in existence can scarcely be more than a score or two. They are perhaps the rarest of all prints.
The First Kiyonobu.
Kiyonobu Speaks.
The actor on his little stage
Struts with a mimic rage.
Across my page
My passion in his form shall tower from age to age.
What he so crudely dreams
In vague and fitful gleams—
The crowd esteems.
Well! let the future judge if his or mine this seems—
This calm Titanic mould
Stalking in colours bold
Fold upon fold—
This lord of dark, this dream I dreamed of old!