History of art . •^-di^fm. HiROSHiGE (1797-1858). The Shower, print.{H. Vever Collection.) tains and the woods, the dresses of passing women,pennants, signs, colored-paper lanterns, the wholenoisy, bustling, twinkling fairyland of the Japanese,permitted the engravers of the peoples prints toexpend, in miraculous profusion, the fantasy and powerof their genius as colorists, dramatists, and story-tellers. Europe came to know Japan by this popu-larized art, by this infinite subdividing of the centralforce that Sesshiu, Motonobu, and Korin revealed totheir country for the glory of man. It is not a
History of art . •^-di^fm. HiROSHiGE (1797-1858). The Shower, print.{H. Vever Collection.) tains and the woods, the dresses of passing women,pennants, signs, colored-paper lanterns, the wholenoisy, bustling, twinkling fairyland of the Japanese,permitted the engravers of the peoples prints toexpend, in miraculous profusion, the fantasy and powerof their genius as colorists, dramatists, and story-tellers. Europe came to know Japan by this popu-larized art, by this infinite subdividing of the centralforce that Sesshiu, Motonobu, and Korin revealed totheir country for the glory of man. It is not altogetherthe fault of Europe if, in unpacking its boxes of tea,its lacquer caskets, and its bamboo furniture, it hardly JAPAN 155 saw more at first than the slightly comical exterior ofthe Japanese soul. For only the externals were atfirst conveyed by that rising sea of little colored paperson which stretched out parades of screen figures inepic posture; gnarled landscapes; warriors streaked. HiROSHiGE (1797-1858). Road of the Tokaido, print.{H. Vever Collection.) with blood; convulsive actors; bedizened, painted,pale women; and artisans, fishermen, reapers, andchildren—all a little droll—and multicolored, gesticu-lating crowds, and evening festivals on the that strange confusion the surprised senses ofEurope could for some time discover nothing butviolent colors and disjointed gestures, and it was onlylittle by little that there came to be perceived a powerof orchestration and a passion for characterizing thingsthat carried a flood of revealing sensations into theOccidental mind. How should we, without Hiroshige,have witnessed the progressive illumination and dark-ening of the skies over the islands of Japan, how should 156 MEDIEVAL ART we have discovered the limpidity of the great dawnsthat come up over their horizon Hnes, the tall, baretrunks of the pines which shoot up from the Japaneseroadsides, giving glimpses between of the deep azureof the air and the
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Keywords: ., boo, bookcentury1900, bookdecade1920, booksubjectart, bookyear1921
