Twelve Hours of the Green Houses (1794–1795)
(Photo credit: Wikipaintings)
Love to every one ♥
These are Utamaro’s depiction of each of the twelve hours of the traditional Japanese clock. The Hours constitute a series of ukiyo-e (“pictures of the floating world”) prints. Utamaro is the first of the three Japanese artists I have featured. His bijinga, or bi-jinga (“beautiful person picture”) earned him fame.
Animals
Each hour is named after an animal. Japan has its bestiary, except that the symbolism attached to Oriental animals often differs from the symbolism attached to animals inhabiting the Western bestiary. The significance of each animal has little to do with the “real” or mythical animal. These animals are anthropomorphic, i.e. humans in disguise.
Human beings have chronicled time, beginning with hours. However, months are also chronicled as are seasons: soltices and equinoxes. Meisho (“famous places”) prints show not only famous places, but people going about their everyday activities or domestic duties and some are divided according to seasons. Utagawa Hiroshige‘s series, One Hundred Famous Views of Edo is divided into seasons.
Twelve Hours of the Green Houses (1794–1795)
(Photo credit: Wikipaintings)
These are Utamaro’s depiction of each of the twelve hours of the traditional Japanese clock. The Hours constitute a series of ukiyo-e (“pictures of the floating world”) prints. Utamaro is the first of the three Japanese artists I have featured. His bijinga (“beautiful person picture”) earned him fame.
Animals
Each hour is named after an animal. Japan has its bestiary, except that the symbolism attached to Oriental animals often differs from the symbolism attached to animals inhabiting the Western bestiary. The significance of each animal has little to do with the “real” or mythical animal. These animals are anthropomorphic, i.e. humans in disguise.
Human beings have chronicled time, beginning with hours. However, months are also chronicled as are seasons: soltices and equinoxes. Meisho (“famous places”) prints show not only famous places, but people going about their everyday activities or domestic duties and some are divided according to seasons. Utagawa Hiroshige‘s series One Hundred Famous Views of Edo is divided into seasons.
Amour déclaré (Love Revealed) (Photo credit: Wikipaintings)
Amour profondément caché (Love Profoundly Concealed) (Photo credit: Wikimedia)
Trois beautés de notre temps (Three Beauties) (Photo credit: Utamaro [FR], Utamaro [EN], Wikipedia)
Woman Wiping Sweat from her Brow, 1798 (Photo credit: Utamaro, Wikipedia)
(Please click on the images to enlarge them)
* * *
In the middle of the nineteenth century, as of Édouard Manet, Japanese art was very influential in the west, particularly in France. The term Anglo-Japanese style was used beginning in 1851. As for the term Japonisme, it was coined in 1872, almost after the fact. By 1872, Japonisme had already had a significant impact on French art.
Many Japanese artists created prints. However, the better known are
We will discuss Kitagawa Utamaro, who lived during the Edo, or Tokugawa, period (1603 and 1868) in the history of Japan. He arrived in Edo, the current-day Tokyo, with his mother under the name of Toyoaki[iii]. Utamaro was a pupil of Toriyama Sekien at the “aristocratic” KanōSchool and may have been his son. He lived in Sekien’s house while he was growing up. (See Utamaro, Wikipedia.)
Utamaro created several series of woodblock prints. Woodblock printing is the traditional form of Japanese printing and it has genres. Utamaro preferred using the popular ukiyo-eprinting. It allowed mass-production of prints. According to the EncyclopædiaBritannica, Utamaro is the greatest artists of theukiyo-e(“pictures of the floating world”) movement.[iv]
Beginning in 1782, in the earlier part of his life, Utamaro lived with Tsutaya Jūzaburō, a publisher who always remained a friend. During the years he spent with Jūzaburō, it is believed Utamaro worked as an illustrator of Kyōka Suigetsu (Mirror Flower, Water, Moon), sometimes called crazy poetry. At that point in his career, he also painted dancers and actors, kabuki.Examples are available at Google Images.
Nature revealed
However, between 1788 and 1791, Utamaro produced books depicting nature (insects, birds, shell). (See Utamaro, Wikipedia.)
(Please click on the image to enlarge it.)
(Photo credit: Google Images)
Flowers of Edo: Young Woman’s Narrative Chanting to the Samisen,c. 1800 (Photo credit: Utamaro, Wikipedia)
However, as of 1791, Utamaro focussed on creating several series of studies portraying women, usually wearing a kimono. Such artwork, to which Utamaro owes the celebrity he enjoyed during his lifetime, is called bijinga (bijin-ga [FR]). Utamaro’s studies of women are considered among the finest bijingaukiyo-e prints. Some of his bijinga prints depict a woman and a child at various stages of childhood. It has therefore been suggested that Utamaro married and had a child, which is mostly speculative but poetical.
Utamaro enjoyed erotica. He painted the courtesans, or prostitutes, of Edo’s Yoshiwara‘s “pleasure” district. It is rumoured that he lived near the Yoshiwara district and that he may have been born in that district. Utamaro published thirty shunga (erotica) books, many of which are listed in Wikipedia. For examples of bijinga and shunga, click on Utamaro.
Wikipedia (see Utamaro) provides a list of Utamaro’s collections of bijinga(bijin-ga [FR]) and shungaestampes (prints). Moreover, according to Wikipedia, Utamaro is best known for his:
Ten Studies in Female Physiognomy; A Collection of Reigning Beauties; Great Love Themes of Classical Poetry (sometimes called Women in Love containing individual prints such as Revealed Love and Pensive Love); and Twelve Hours in the Pleasure Quarters.”
A Terrible Pity
In 1804, he was sentenced to be handcuffed for fifty days for publishing prints depicting the concubines of military ruler Toyotomi Hideyoshi (2 February 1536 or 26 March 1537 – 18 September 1598). This sentence, horrible torture,[iii] crushed a proud Utamaro emotionally and ended his career. He died two years later, in 1806, at the age of 53.
Utamaro had produced some 2,000 prints and a number of paintings called surinomo, also prints, but produced in smaller quantities and for a more refined audience.
Utamaro, an immensely gifted artist, was discovered in Europe in the second half of the nineteenth century. As mentioned at the beginning of this post, prints made by Utamaro, Katsushika Hokusai and Utagawa Hiroshige brought to the West the Anglo-Japanese style and Japonisme, or Japanism.
Japanese prints “had a major impact on Impressionistpainting.” Impressionists were influenced by “[t]he clarity of line, spaciousness of composition, and boldness and flatness of colour and light in Japanese prints had a direct impact on their work and on that of their followers.”[v]
According to Wikipedia, “artists were especially affected by the lack of perspective and shadow, the compositional freedom gained by placing the subject off-centre mostly with a low diagonal axis to the background.” (See Japonism, Wikipedia.)
Orientalism had precedents in Europe. Byzantine art and, especially, the art of the Ottoman Empire left an imprint. Among other historical circumstances, the Crusades and the travels of Marco Polo[vi] (c.1254 – 8–9 January 1324) contributed to a knowledge of the Orient in Europe. Trade routes were established.
However, when works were brought from Japan to Europe in the middle of the nineteenth century, after a period of seclusion, named sakoku, Japonisme became a pervasive influence. It started to permeate European art, overriding movements and extending into the decorative arts and design. It may have dealt a blow to academic art, sometimes called “art pompier [pompous].”
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