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WHY JAPANESE PRINTS ARE UNIQUE

The period just discussed, in which great painters, engravers, and printers vied with one another in the arena of peaceful artistic emulation, naturally produced prints of the highest quality as works of art. Unquestionably the most important factor in this unparalleled development was the simultaneous appearance and activity of painters of exceptional ability and skill; but we must not forget the admirable co-operation of the engravers and printers with them in the endeavour to put on the market the most artistic prints they were capable of turning out. At first, it is true, men of letters taking a special interest in the art of chromoxylography helped and guided the artists, but in course of time the painters themselves replaced them as designers and “conductors” of the group. Thus, when designing and painting a picture for a wood-cut, the painter would take into full consideration the ability of the engraver and the printer, so as to enable them to show their powers to the best advantage. It was thus that the products of their joint labours were given a maximum of artistic value.

This can be made clearer by reference to the opposite tendency, where such complete co-operation was absent. In prints made by artists not of the ukiyo-e school, the painter failed to give sufficient thought to the aim he should have kept in view of producing artistic colour prints rather than ordinary pictures. He would trust too much

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to his own powers in the use of the brush and give them too free play. The same with regard to the choice and use of the various colours. And he insisted upon the engraver and the printer producing prints that were exact copies of his original paintings. Such mechanical reproductions of hand-painted pictures were naturally wanting in that indefinable charm which was peculiar to colour prints. The failure here is entirely due to the painter’s lack of knowledge of the special qualities of colour prints as works of synthetic art,

The ukiyo-e painter, on the other hand, who was fully conscious of his position in relation to the art of chromoxylography, worked with a perfect understanding of the distinction between colour prints and hand-painted pictures. Since the size of the picture to be produced was definitely fixed from the outset, the technical mode of expression had to be devised so as to suit the size and purpose. The lines and curves were so drawn as to enable the engraver to produce, by his dextrous handling of the knife and chisel, splendid lines and curves most appropriate to colour prints. The colours, too, were chosen and used with an eye to simplicity rather than to that complexity which would be admired in a hand-painted picture. For such complexity involved serious difficulties in mass production, whereas simplification of the colouring process made possible a large-scale distribution of the prints at low prices. The artists, therefore, devised such an arrangement of the colours as would make it feasible to produce fine effects with only two or three pigments. It was these technical difficulties and devices that differentiated colour prints from hand-painted pictures, and gave the former

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beauties of colour harmony not to be met with in the latter.

The artistic excellence peculiar to Japanese colour prints, then, consists in the fact that they are unique in regard to design, and distinguishable from hand-painted pictures not only in regard to lines and curves, but also in respect to the distribution and combination of colours.

Our colour prints make use of lines to represent the shapes or images of men and things, and employ two, three, or at most a few more simple colours or pigments to achieve artistic effects by their skilful combinations, rather than to give the spectator the visual impressions produced by natural objects themselves. Not the mere photographic reproduction of Nature, but the adding of something artistic to her image—herein, in fact, consists the essential and significant difference between Japanese colour prints and the chromoxylographs of Western countries; and it is this difference that enables our art to show its unique qualities to the best advantage.

And these special qualities place Japanese colour prints definitely above those of any other country on earth. And the best representatives of these superior Japanese prints are those produced in the period beginning with 1765 and ending, say, with 1800.