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 Sketch-tour books and prints of the early twentieth century [continued]
Scott Johnson
The first wave of official enthusiasm for Western style art had been in the
1870s culminating in the establishment of the Technical Art School (Kôbu Bijutsu
Gakkô) in 1876 where the Italian painter Antonio Fontanesi taught. The training
was thorough, but the purpose for which the government had built the school was
to foster engineering and industrial design through accurate draftsmanship. The
fact that this school produced artists of the status of Asai Chû (1856- 1907)
and Koyama Shôtarô (1857-1916) was incidental to this purpose.
There followed a sharp reaction against Western style art in the 1880s with
the strengthening of the Nihonga movement and widespread enthusiasm for Nanga
painting.
A resurgence of interest in Western style painting was sparked by the first
exhibition in 1889 of the Meiji Fine Arts Society, a group of oil-painters and
watercolorists associated with Asai and Koyama. A further impetus came in 1893
with the return to Japan of two artists who had studied oil-painting in Paris.
Kuroda Seiki (1866-1924) and Kume Keiichirô (1866-1934) had been active in
the Parisian art world at a momentous time. They had absorbed the influence of
the Impressionists, most directly through their studies of the plein air
techniques of Raphael Collin(1850-1916). The two men had also learned much about
how art was promoted and nurtured in France. Confident of their artistic skills,
they were also acutely aware of the need for stable public support for
yôga, the Japanese catch-all term for art in the Western manner. They
brought back with them a keen sense of how polemics, exhibitions, journalism,
book illustration and even scandal were important in generating public interest
and in attracting talented students. In the meantime Ernest Fenollosa and
Okakura Tenshin had spurred the creation of the Tôkyô School of Fine Arts (Tôkyô
Bijutsu Gakkô) in 1887. The original purpose of this school had been to combat
the influence of Western art by encouraging and developing traditional Japanese
approaches to art. By 1896, however, the times had changed, and the school
opened a completely new department devoted to Western style art. Kuroda Seiki
and Kume Keiichirô, were given charge of the painting classes.
Their choice was somewhat controversial. There were, after all, many Japanese
oil painters at this time. Older artists, notably Asai Chû and Koyama Shotaro,
had long been established as painters and teachers of great skill. The choice of
the younger artists inevitably generated a sense of rivalry, especially among
students. For at least two decades the Western style artists of Japan
weredivided loosely into two groups: those associated with Asai and Koyama who
had studied in the1870s at the Technical Art Schooland those associated with
Kuroda and Kume who had studied in Europe in the Impressionist-influenced plein
air style.
This rivalry was to a certain extent journalistic puff, perhaps even
engineered by the canny Kume Keiichirô to sustain public interest in yôga at a
time when museum and gallery exhibitions were limited.
The turn of the century marked the completion of training of the first class
in Western painting at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts. Some of the students had
come from the same area of Kyûshû where Kuroda Seiki's antecedents had been the
feudal lords. The Kuroda name still suggested wealth, power and prestige, and
these were clearly connections which would be useful to the success of graduates
from the same area. But there were several graduates who lacked such family or
geographical connections. They too needed to establish patrons and to attract
devoted apprentices and serious, paying, amateur students. They also needed to
develop and extend their skills in sketching and painting. The convivial
sketch-tour phenomenon of the time provided a means to serve both ends.
Sometimes singly but more often in groups, artists began to take to the
countryside, sketching, painting and sharing their breakthroughs and
frustrations with one another. Such travels served to spread awareness of their
new approaches to painting, as the artist suddenly appeared in remote villages
with pencils, watercolors, sketch pads, and sometimes oils and easels.
In Japan the irresistible appeal of armchair travel, a love of shoptalk of
any kind and the potential for attracting clients and amateurs interested in
watercolors and oils made it desirable to get the experiences of these
sketch-tours recorded in books. The resulting publications became a genre of
illustrated book, featuring sketches and paintings made on sketch-tours. The
sometimes lengthy texts of these sketch-tour books were often written by the
artists themselves. They included travel tips, comments on scenes depicted,
technical notes on art works done in the field and sometimes specifications of
the various media and artisans employed in the book illustrations. In short, a
wealth of information about art and artists described by the artists themselves.
This was a major new development in Japanese art book publishing.
First sketch-tour books
The beginning of the genre was modest, however. In 1905 the artist Nakazawa
Hiromitsu (1874-1964) published his Gojûsantsugi Suketchi. Hiromitsu had
been a student of Kuroda Seiki and an exhibitor with his White Horse Society.
Ultimately Hiromitsu became the most prolific artist in the sketch-tour genre in
addition to his renown as an oil painter. Gojûsantsugi Suketchi (Sketches
of the 53 Stations) is a booklet with a lithographic cover containing a printed
text and five tipped in color woodcuts. Although announced as a 'first series',
no sequel is known, suggesting that the circumstances were not yet ripe for
public acceptance.
© Boston Book
Co. 2001
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