I will make Spring to circle them
Like a faint aureole of delight.
Their luminous youth and joy shall stem
The night.
And men shall say: Behold! he chose,
From Time's wild welter round him strown,
This hour; and paid for its repose
His own.
Koriusai's life is shrouded in those mists prevalent in the cases of most Ukioye artists. It is known that he was a Samurai, or feudal retainer of knightly rank; upon the death of his master, Tsuchiya, he became, as was the custom, a ronin—that is, a retainer without a lord—and established himself near the picturesque Ryogoku Bridge in Yedo as a painter. He originally used the name Haruhiro. Shigenaga was his first teacher, Harunobu his second; his work can safely be dated between 1770 and 1781. By the end of this period Kiyonaga was beginning to advance achievements that eclipsed Koriusai's. As Fenollosa points out, it was Koriusai's misfortune to collide with Harunobu at the beginning and with Kiyonaga at the end of his career; could we obliterate those two, we might think of Koriusai as "the most beautiful Ukioye designer."
KORIUSAI: MOTHER AND BOY.
Size 28 × 4½.
Signed Koriu ga
KORIUSAI: TWO LOVERS IN THE FIELDS—SPRING CUCKOO.
Size 27 × 4½.
Signed Koriusai ga.
Plate 16.
Koriusai was already working in Harunobu's manner at the time of the master's death; and afterward he continued Harunobu's experiments. His characteristic device in colour is the predominance of a strong orange pigment, based on lead, which when originally applied had the utmost brilliance, but which now is frequently changed by chemical decomposition into a rich mottled black. Combining this orange with a blue of his own devising, he obtained novel and striking effects.
