“The big rain comes dancing to the earth.”
Was not Hokusai truly “a portion of the tempest”? as he represents himself, drawing Fuji, in winter, working in a frenzy of haste,—for the ground is covered with snow—two brushes in his hand, and wonder of wonders! one held between his toes. This picture, also from “The Hundred Views of Fuji,” prefaces Marcus B. Huish’s work on Japanese art.
The closing scene in the drama of Hokusai’s life is full of pathos. Though his whole career had been shadowed by poverty, and shrouded in obscurity, his art still held him earth-bound. Upon his death-bed he said, “If Heaven would only grant me ten more years!”
Then, as he realized that the end approached, he murmured, “If Heaven had but granted me five more years I could have been a real painter.”
So ended the life of the master of Ukiyo-ye. His body lies beneath the pines of Asakusa, but would we not gladly believe that his “soul turned Will-o’-the-wisp, may ever come and go at ease, over the summer fields,”—for this was the last expression of his passionate desire.
Hiroshige.
Landscape Painter and Apostle of Impressionism.
F the lovely “Land of the Rising Sun” should, during one of those volcanic throes which threaten her extinction, sink forever beneath the depths of ocean, she would yet live for us through the magic brush of Hiroshige. Gazing at his landscapes, the airy wing of imagination wafts us to a land of showers and sunsets—a fairy scene, where the rainbow falls to earth, shattered into a thousand prisms—where waters softly flow towards horizons touched with daffodil or azure tinted.
Here is a gliding sampan with closed shutters. Inside, the lantern’s diffused light throws a silhouette upon the bamboo curtain, a drooping girlish head bending towards the unseen lover at her feet. Ripples play upon the water, stirred by the amorous breath of oriental night. In fancy we hear the tinkling of the samisen, touched by delicate fingers, sweetly perfumed.
Now we see rain upon the Tokaido. A skurrying storm. Affrighted coolies running this way and that. A mountain full of echoes and horror. Down it splash rivulets, running into inky pools. Darkness and terror and loneliness, and longing for warmth and shelter and the peace of home.