The impressions of Lake Biwa, one of Hiroshige’s finest series of views, serve as a beautiful illustration of the almost exclusive use of line in bringing out the salient characteristics of the landscape. His sweeping brush shows us volcanic mountains, encircling the lake, like rocky billows, torn and jagged, for legend says that as the peerless mountain Fuji-san rose in one night, so the ground sank, and the space was filled by the beautiful lake named from its resemblance in form to the Japanese lute. The trees which fringe the shore, black and misty, upon close inspection resolve themselves into a network of criss-cross lines and blotches. The sampans’ sails, the waves, the rushes on the shore, the roofs of the village nestling beneath the cliffs, are all adroitly rendered by horizontal lines and skillful zigzags. The rest of the composition is a wash of shaded blues and grays, fading towards the horizon into smoky violets.
Biwa, the beautiful, suggestive of mystery, the four-stringed lute gives thee her name. Through the music of thy rippling eddies do sighs well up in thee, the murmur of the lost? A pall of darkness hovers over thee, pierced by a gleam of sunshine, beckoning like a lover’s hand.
Much diversity of opinion exists with regard to the identity of the artist, or artists, who designed the prints signed Hiroshige. The latest research, however, justifies the assertion that there was but one landscape painter, Hiroshige the Great.
The pupils,—notably one, who, among other names, signed Shigenobu, until after his master’s death, when he took the title of Hiroshige the Second, gradually assuming his full nom-de-pinceau, Hiroshige Ichiryusai,—faithfully imitated his style, also amplifying the multitudinous designs and sketches made by the master, yet the genius of the great artist is stamped upon his work, and as a clever critic tersely says: “Everything he touched was his autograph.”
Mr. John S. Happer, an indefatigable student of Ukiyo-ye and collector of nishiki-ye gems, during diligent research, discovered a clew that leads, beyond controversy, to the right attribution of the prints signed Hiroshige, and which he intends later to make public. Nearly all the important vertical sets, he says, most of which have been ascribed to the second Hiroshige, are by the first artist, although doubtless his pupils assisted him in his work, rendering their aid, as did the pupils of Hokusai in the preparation of the Mang-wa. Hiroshige also associated himself at times with other artists, one set of the Kisokaido, for example, being in part the work of Keisai Yeisen, and he supplied many backgrounds to the prints of Kunisada and Kuniyoshi.
In the catalogue of the “Collection Hayashi” only two prints are assigned to pupils of Hiroshige, one of them bearing the signature of Shigenobu.
The masterpieces signed Hiroshige are all by one great genius, the Apostle of Impressionism. “Hiro, Hiro, Hiroshige, great is Hiroshige,” cries Mr. Happer, in an outburst of enthusiasm. “Before Hiroshige there was no Japanese landscape master,—after him there is none.”
In the “Happer” Collection is a memorial portrait of Hiroshige by Kunisada (Toyokuni), the inscription upon which is of especial interest, confirming, as it does, the date of his death and proving that the “Meisho Yedo Hiak’kei,” the vertical set of Yedo views, so often ascribed to his successor, were by the master.
The inscription is thus quaintly interpreted by a Japanese student:
“Ryusai Hiroshige is a distinguished follower of Toyohiro, who was a follower of Toyoharu, the founder of the Utagawa School. At the present time, Hiroshige, Toyokuni and Kuniyoshi are considered the three great masters of Ukiyo-ye,—no others equal them. Hiroshige was especially noted for landscape. In the Ansei era, 1854-1859, he published the ‘Meisho Yedo Hiak’kei’ (‘Hundred Views of Yedo’), which vividly present the scenery of Yedo to the multitude of admirers.