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- for these samurai and pleaded for clemency. While the authorities agreed that their action was inspired by the highest motives and was the behaviour of true samurai, the ronin had flouted the law and had to atone for their crime. They were instructed to commit mass seppuku, and their bodies were buried next to their masters in a temple in Edo. Their loyalty, sacrifice, persistence and honour have been memorialized in highly popular plays, like Chushingura, and several series of woodblock prints.
Ukiyo-e prints continued to be made late into the 19th century, but by this time the art form had lost much of its vitality and was in a state of decline. Although the woodblock print had little value in Japan and was often used as wrapping paper, it was the first Japanese art form to attract widespread attention and enthusiastic admiration in the West. The Edo-period prints that were shipped to Europe and America by the thousands had a great influence on Impressionist and post-impressionist artists like Monet, Manet,
Gaugin, Degas, van Gogh, Toulouse-Lautrec, James McNeill Whistler and Mary Cassatt. Western painters were fascinated with the Japanese motifs found in the prints, like the various splendid patterns found on kimonos, and with Japanese compositional devices, like the truncation of the major part of the subject, startling compositions with strong diagonals, solid areas of colour, the use of large empty spaces, the division of the composition into simple geometric areas, the conscious and deliberate use of asymmetry, the vertical format for landscapes and the unconventional perspectives created by the use of high or low viewpoint to bring the foreground and background towards the same plane. They were also intrigued with the portrayal of everyday activities and ordinary experiences as seen from different and unusual angles. Risque scenes of the Edo entertainment districts influenced Toulouse-Lautrec, known for his paintings of the Parisian world of theatres, circuses, cabarets and prostitutes.
One final type of painting for the common people was the souvenir painting made at a village called Otsu near Kyoto. The village people supplemented their income by painting simple, colourful sketches of deities, demons and beauties to sell to travellers as cheap souvenirs. These simple paintings, called otsu-e, were either handpainted or reproduced by the use of stencils and gesso to add blocks of colour. Otsu-e are now appreciated as quaint folk art paintings.
45. Otsu painter / Peintre
Wisteria Maiden /
Jeune femme aux glycines Mid 18th century Hanging scroll, ink and colours on paper
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