Supposedly Michaelangelo (ミケランジェロ) said he did not create his sculptures, but rather freed them from the stone. While we know that is a beautiful idea we also know that when it comes right down to it it isn’t true. Michaelangelo’s genius was more than just picking the right slab of marble. The same principal is true of the works of Utamaro and Kuniyoshi and the brilliant carver’s they worked with. The development of a sense of  ‘transparency’ started slowly in the printing world as early as the 1770s – maybe earlier, but by the turn of the 18th century many of the principles had been mastered. As I fill out this post I will try to show you how this came about, but mostly I will just show you examples and let you draw your own conclusions. (Below is an example of one of Michelangelo’s unfinished sculptures. It represents a slave emerging from the Carrara marble and was posted at Flickr by William Cromar.)

To begin with I want to show you one of the most brilliant Japanese prints of all time. It is by Hokushū (北洲), an Osaka artist, and represents the actor Nakamura Utaemon III as Ichikawa Goemon disguised as the farmer Gosaku. Dating from 1830 it shows Utaemon on stage standing before a gauze-like screen behind which are a group of warriors who are pursuing him. The screen itself is meant to represent smoke, but I will get back to that later. First the print, the brilliant, brilliant print.

  This example is owned by a great friend of mine. He will never know how grateful I am that he has let me use it.

Remember the smoke? A quick glance at this print and you can easily pick out the whirling smoke motif. Below is a detail showing the area behind the screen just to the right of the actor (as you are viewing him).

But it isn’t the smoke. It is the hidden figures that count here. Most people would glance and this print, see the actor on stage and notice a backdrop and leave it at that,  but that is where the true brilliance of this print exists. That is why I have isolated a couple of the figures with yellow outlines so you can begin to see what I am talking about. There are more than just these three.

   Find me a more remarkable print than this Hokushu and I will retract (some of) my words.

So when did it all begin? I haven’t a clue, but what I do know is that by the time of Harunobu (春信) serious attempts were being made at the representation of transparency – mainly in water. Below is an example from the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston accompanied by two details. The museum dates this print to ca. 1767-68. It not only shows two young women standing in a stream with their feet showing, but also there is a net motif – something which will reappear in this post several times – and even an attempt at a display of looking at captured fish through a glass container. Only the feet part makes any real attempt at transparency while the other elements only hint at it.

         www.mfa.org

Keep in mind: No color in this Harunobu print is anywhere near what it looked like originally. Only the blacks have maintained their true integrity, but even these must have faded to some degree. Most of the inks were made from organic dyes which were incredibly color fugitive. The stream must have been a delicate blue, or even not so delicate, but one that was definitely not color fast. Perhaps it was made from the dayflower. Looking fine when it was fresh, but just give it a few years and you will be asking yourself “What blue? I don’t see any blue.” But trust me, it was there.

What is it like when you have the blues? I am not talking about sadness here. I am talking about the later blue dyes which do a much finer job of holding their color. By the time Kuniyoshi (国芳) had come into his own publishers had started making much better use of blues which did not fade so easily. Below are two examples from the collection of the British Museum. The first from ca. 1842 is an image of the strong-woman Ōiko (大井児) moving a boulder so that the rice fields can be irrigated. Notice her feet. They are blue! Next to that print may be an even better example (for our purposes) dating from 1830-32 by Kuniyoshi. It shows one of the Water Margin heroes, Hayakawa Ayunosuke (早川鮎之助) trapping fish. Notice that in this case it is not just his feet, but his hands too which appear under the water.

       Both examples: © Trustees of the British Museum

By way of contrast, if you are cutting corners… The next example, also from the British Museum and also by Kuniyoshi from 1852 shows Ōiko in the same act of moving the rock but this time her feet are no longer visible. It’s a bit easier to print them that way. Not as many steps.

   © Trustees of the British Museum

Sometimes I will post an image just because it is sooooo beautiful (charming, mysterious or whatever) – That is the case with this surimono print by Kuniyoshi on loan to the British Museum. There is just something about it which makes my heart beat a little stronger. Perhaps you will agree.

   © Trustees of the British Museum

Now it is time for total immersion – There are two more prints you should see before we leave the leave water (as a liquid) behind us. One is by Utamaro and dates from 1788, which seems damned early for how incredible it is, and the other is by Kuniyoshi from 1834-35. Both deal with struggles between humans and kappa or water-monsters. I’ll show you the Kuniyoshi first in which Toranosuke is in a life/death battle.

   This is on loan from Prof. Arthur Miller. © Trustees of the British Museum
Notice how the entire print, with the exception of our hero’s face and the identifying cartouches, appears to be washed over with various shades of blue – even if that is not how they did it in the workshop.

A few words before I show you the Utamaro print: Normally I don’t like to show shunga prints, i.e., Japanese erotica. This is not because I am a prude – I am not – but because I am uncomfortable with the people who seem overly obsessed by this genre. You know who you are. However, as an art form – if you can get past the shock value – an erotic print can be just as beautifully designed as a non-erotic one. In my opinion that is the reason this image is being shown here. It shows a female abalone diver under the water being assaulted by two aroused male kappa. [I seem to remember somewhere that all kappa are males, but can't say so for sure.] Nearby on the rock another diver watches both “…in horror and fascination” as Timothy Clark says.

   © Trustees of the British Museum

Note: I chose not to give a close-up detail of the action in this print because it is even more lascivious, explicit, disturbing and disgusting than visible here. The kappa tongues alone tell the tale. However, for the sake of disclosure, if you are among the curious, the British Museum shows an enlarged detail of the lower left of this print.

Boy is she steamed! – One of the great 20th century prints is of a kneeling nude by Ito Shinsui (伊東深水: 1898-1972). It shows a woman at her bath enveloped in steam. Anyone familiar with the production of Japanese woodblock prints knows about the use of the baren, a tool used for rubbing the color onto the sheet by applying pressure from the back of the sheet. (The sheet is placed face down onto an inked block.) It is the masterful use of this instrument that gives us a sense that steam is swirling everywhere. This print first appeared in 1922.

In 1933 Watanabe published two prints by Kasamatsu Shiro  and Kawase Hasui using a similar technique and effect. Both show the interiors of a spas at the hot springs: the Shiro at Nozawa and the Hasui at Hoshi.

            
© Trustees of the British Museum – only for the print shown directly above. The one to the right is the Hasui, but is not from their collection.

When it comes to clothing that is the point -  A personal note: When I was 16 years old I found myself forced to accompany my parents and an older cousin to a nightclub to see Tony Bennett. No 16 year old wants to hear Tony Bennett. These were the early days of Haight Ashbury and we were in San Francisco, but this was no vacation. As we were standing in line a smartly dressed man walked by with a beautiful woman on his arm. As I recall she was about a head taller than he was and she was gorgeous. It wasn’t as though she could have gone unnoticed. However, in spite of her natural beauty she was also dressed provocatively. At least that is how most Midwesterners would have felt at that time. She was curvaceous, stacked and… wearing a see-through top which left nothing to the imagination. I saw her first and said nothing. When my father finally noticed her he said in a loud, and I do mean loud, voice: Will you take a look at those! Of course, he meant her breasts. If that wasn’t bad enough he just kept on talking about them. Can you picture my embarrassment? I can. Maybe you would have had to have been there, but I don’t see why. A thousand – or in this case far fewer – words are worth one very explicit picture.

I hadn’t thought of that moment for years, but doing this research brought it all back. Especially considering the images produced by Utamaro and some of his publishers. Let’s start off with a rather tame but wonderful example of a print of what appears to be a mother and child from the collection at the Met. At first glance it might not appear pertinent to this post, but a little closer examination highlighted by a partial detail of the woman’s covered lower face and the reason becomes eminently clear. The lines of her face and the pink of her lips are there for the whole world to see.

According to the curatorial notes this print dates from ca. 1804. It was published by Yamaguchiya Chūsuke. Unfortunately, as with most other prints shown here, we do not know who the master carver was.

     www.metmuseum.org.

If ever there was a word that sounded onomatopoetic that wasn’t – I don’t know about you, but the word diaphanous sounds like  itself to me. However, that probably wasn’t the case when it was first coined in ancient Greece by combining the words for ‘show’ and ‘though’ to mean ‘transparent’. The air can be diaphanous as in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness when he described “…the very mist on the Essex marshes was like a gauzy and radiant fabric.” Or, as when Balzac was describing intricately delicate jewelry as if it “…had been fashioned by the fairies, who the stories tell us, are condemned by a jealous Carabosse [an evil fairy, a fée malfaisante], to collect the eyes of ants, or weave a fabric so diaphanous that a nutshell can contain it.”

What I marvel at is that such fabrics could be made in the first place and that then Japanese woodblock print carvers could translate those fabrics into something so incredibly visual that we can mistake for even one moment what we are seeing. Utamaro was a genius at his art and some of his collaborators were beyond human in their abilities. Perhaps they were Japanese fairies. What do you think? Below are two more prints from what must be regarded as a bit of a golden age for this art. The first dating from ca. 1797 and published by Moriya Jihei (森屋治兵衛) is from the collection in Boston and needs no explanation.

  www.mfa.org

The second example was published by Wakasaya Yoichi (若狹屋与市) a few years ealier in ca. 1794-5 and comes from the collection of the New York Public Library. While it may be a bit more subtle, it isn’t by much.

  Courtesy of The New York Public Library – www.nypl.org

Seen through the slats of the sudare (簀垂れ) -In the Art Institute of Chicago there is an Utamaro print, the left-hand panel of a triptych, which shows elegant woman who have gathered to wash and stretch silk cloth. In this panel one is seated on a veranda holding a long pipe while one is standing. The seated one is clearly visible through the sudare which only shields the upper part of her body. Behind both women is part of the stretched silk cloth. The publisher was Yamadaya Sanshirō and Asano and Clark date this print from ca. 1796-7. This is important because it helps to give us a gauge of how early this style of transparency was developed. Clark also notes that this was Utamaro’s updated version of a similar scene by Kiyonaga. Now this will send me off on a search for similar techniques in his work. I’ll let you know if I find anything.

   ©The Art Institute of Chicago

One of the great contributors to this site is Eikei (英渓), an intellectual scholar and collector, who was kind enough to send me this image of a Chikanobu (周延: 1838-1912) print from his own collection. I have isolated the most pertinent part here. Notice the cat outside on the veranda and the blossoming cherry tree near the stream and rocks.

  The Eikei collection

The insubstantiality of ghosts – Ghosts are a curious subject of Japanese prints in more ways than one. Early on images of actors as ghosts depended mainly on the use of makeup and costuming and that is basically how they were presented graphically. However, when printers/artists/carvers figured out how to display them as otherworldly a whole new sub-genre – albeit a small one – was born. Of course, the same principles could be applied to ghouls and ogres and such. Below is “The Ghost of Koheiji” (こはだ小平ニ) by Hokusai from ca. 1831. While this image is remarkably impactful whoever the ghost is staring down upon need not worry if an old belief is true – ghosts cannot enter the areas protected by mosquito netting. Such spectres might be able to scare the ess out of you and even peer in, but they can’t get you. Trust me.

   © Trustees of the British Museum

Another fine example of a ghostly appearance shows up in another print by Kuniyoshi published by Ibaya Senzaburo (伊場屋仙三郎). It represents the story of the devout Buddhist woman who was traveling to see her husband when she was set upon by a bandit who killed her. This would be bad enough except that she was very, very pregnant at the time. The bodhisattva Kannon took pity on her and had a nearby rock cry out for help. A monk heard the cries and saw the dead woman. He pulled the baby out of he womb and fed it candy. After that the stone was said to weep nightly – that is, until it was removed in 1877. It is probably stored in the same warehouse that holds the Ark of the Covenant from the raiders movie of Indiana Jones fame. Notice the monk holding the baby to his chest while looking at the ghost-mother.

But before you go straight to the print let me point out one thing: Look carefully at the tree seen behind/through the ghost. The ghost is not really transparent. It is printed in such a way as to give that illusion, but it is only an illusion. The ghost is prints like every other area of this image. At least that is what I think and just thought you should know.

     
www.mfa.org

Were you thinking of a nice getaway at sea? Well, forget it. Ghosts and monsters are everywhere. Below is another Kuniyoshi print published by Kojima Jubei. However, unlike the ghost mother seen above this print does look like the looming monster is printed over the top of the top of the waves. No fakery here. This is the real thing.

    
© Trustees of the British Museum

It takes guts! – It takes blood and guts to produce a deluxe printing with the most expensive inks and techniques and then at the end to splatter the bottom of the print with red ink the color of blood.  One mistake and this print would have had to have been thrown onto the trash heap. As it is, despite its gruesome nature, it is a masterpiece. The detail shown below the full image makes clear the masterful use of the red ink. In places it is splattered, but in the large pooled area it rides above the painting on the screen which is still visible.

   This, too, is owned by a great and generous friend.

My mistake: I originally described the figure of Oiwa as a ghost. However, despite her gruesome appearance she hasn’t made it that far yet. She is still very much – well not ‘very much’ – alive. Sara E. Thompson in her new book on Kuniyoshi’s 69 stations of the Kisokaidō gives a good summary of this scene. Oiwa is being poisoned by her husband who has fallen in love with another woman. Ailing Oiwa is visited by a blind masseur who is horribly shocked by merely feeling the distortions on her face. He suggests that she look at herself in a mirror. When she does she is distraught. Thompson says: “When she attempts to comb her hair, it falls out in bloody clumps, dripping onto the white paper of an overturned screen (tsuitate).”

Smokin’ hot – There is a wonderful Utamaro diptych published by Uemura Yohei (上村与兵衛) in ca. 1794-95 showing four women doing kitchen duties. One is paring an eggplant, one is blowing on a fire and one – the one who concerns us here – is trying to scoop water for a tea cup. She is reacting to a column of smoke which is affecting only her. But before I show you the image I want to quote one passage from the Utamaro catalogue written by Timothy Clark: “Several elaborate printing techniques are employed, such as brass powder on the stove, pink mica on the rim of the ash-box under it, and gauffrage to suggest the rivets on this rim. [¶] As Suzuki Jūzō has pointed out, this print had a considerable influence on works by Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1797-1861) in the later Edo period.” Two points: 1) Clark doesn’t single out the printing of the irritating smoke for special comment, but that’s okay and 2) he does mention the effect on Kuniyoshi which is important since the next print after the Utamaro diptych will be one of Kuniyoshi smoke images.

©The Art Institute of Chicago -Fortunately this image is large enough for you to see clearly the smoke printed over part of the woman’s clothing, the tea cup, her hand and much of her face.

Below is a Kuniyoshi print from ca. 1848 and published by Sumiyoshiya Masugoro. It represent Takeda Nobushige in a cloud of smoke. The detail image next to it may should help you see the overlaid printing of the smoke a little better.

  
© Trustees of the British Museum

There is another Kuniyoshi print from ca. 1840 in the Allen Museum at Oberlin College showing Gomō (呉猛) adding an extra smoking brazier to keep the mosquitoes away from his father. It is one of the examples from one of the series of 24 Paragons of Filial Piety.

Ainsworth Bequest, Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College

Smoke and perhaps a case of the vapors – There is an ancient myth in Japan about the humble fisherman Urashima Tarō (浦島太郎) who saves the life of a threatened tortoise. In return the tortoise takes him to the home of the Dragon King which lies in the depths of the sea. While there Tarō receives a gift of a box from the Dragon King’s daughter, but he has to promise never to open it. He agrees. Homesick he returns to his village, but recognizes no one and nothing seems familiar. In desperation, knowing that the box contains something precious, he breaks his promise in the hope that the contents will save him from his suffering. Remember, he had been warned and had given his word.

As soon as box is opened smoke envelops his body and as it lifts he finds that he has aged 300 years. What seemed like such a short visit to the underseas palace was really a huge expanse of time. Only by opening the box is the truth revealed. Below are two prints. The first is by Kuniyoshi and shows the tortoise giving Tarō a vision of the palace by merely exhaling his miraculous breath. While technically this is not an image of transparency it gives us the sense of such a thing.

   www.mfa.org

In the second example transparency does play a role. This detail from a Yoshiiku print from the Eikei collection clearly shows the smoke rising from the just opened box most of which is out of view to the left. One of the great things about this print is that where the smoke has already covered Urashima Tarō one can detect that he has already aged tremendously. That is why we are following the Yoshiiku detail with and even more isolated one which clearly shows the lines in his face and the whitening of his hair.

  
The Eikei collection

Just short of sheerness – Shoji or paper screens allow the transmission of light, but stop short of the clarity of glass. For that reason traditionally when an interior is lit while it is dark outside figures often are shown as  silhouetted forms. This made it easy for artists to portray an action or profile in general while leaving out all of the specific details which commonly fill our visual field. There are far too many examples to show here, but I have chosen two which should help make the point. The first by Utamaro and dating from the 1790s shows an elegant beauty sitting on the veranda of a teahouse. Women within are clearly visible in profile. A particularly nice touch is the part of the print showing the shoji door opened slightly.

   Ainsworth Bequest, Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College

The next example is, for me, one of the most remarkable prints every produced by a Japanese woodblock print artist. This is one of those rare examples when an artist trained in traditional methods thinks outside the box. In 1877 Kunichika (国周: 1835-1900) created the Cat and Lantern (猫と提灯) – a shocker of an image when it comes to presentation and techniques. It shows an overturned lantern with the candle still burning. A belled cat has trapped a rat which tried to flee through the lantern but is being held down by its tail. Part of the rat’s snout can be seen in the area where it has gnawed through the paper covering. But that isn’t what is most remarkable about this image. What is most astounding – and yet so subtly presented – is the impression of the desperate standing rat pressing its front paws against the unbroken paper of the lantern.

A particularly nice touch of the print being shown here is the use of darker inks to show the pressure of he straining paws of the rat. The original publisher was Sekō and the carver was Inoue Eikici. None of the first edition, which number no more than 5 examples, was for sale. Two reasons: 1) a ton of experimental methods were being used and 2) this print is double the normal size of most woodblock prints. There are a number of other later editions produced well into the first decades of the 20th century. These included other publishers and sometimes new blocks.

  
www.mfa.org

The development of transparency was not confined to the Japanese or even to print forms – In Europe in the 14th century Giotto (ジョット) made the great leap from Byzantine representations, where all of the figures were flat – two dimensional – to figures which seemed to exist in three dimensions in real space and to have genuine weight to them. Vasari said that Giotto “opened the gates of truth” to all later artists.  Contemporary with Giotto was Duccio (ドゥッチオ) who stuck closer to the old order. While his paintings were remarkably decorative in nature, lusciously so, his settings, like those of Giotto, remained unreal. Neither artist knew how to gives his viewers a full sense of reality. (See the Duccio below which we found at commons.wikimedia.)

It took centuries of experimentation and advances in technology before landscapes and interiors looked like the real McCoy. In fact, it took even longer, long after issues of perspective and recession had been resolved, for an artist to figure out how to paint the illusion where one could almost feel the morning chill or even seen the mist created by the level of humidity in the air. This was Claude Lorrain (クロード・ロラン: ca. 1600 to 1682), a man of such consummate skill that he changed our perceptions forever. Claude was the first artist to give us the sense of the air we breathe, to show us its transparency. Compare his work with that of the Duccio and you will see we never looked back – that is, until the advent of Modern Art. (The Claude shown below was posted at Flickr by jampa.)

The usual warning: I have just started this post and there will be a lot more images and text in the future. Also, keep in mind that I am mostly expressing my opinions which run the gamut from almost right to – I could say ‘left’ here, but I won’t – to very, very wrong. Please bear with me and if you have something to say about anything I have said here then please get in touch. I look forward to hearing from you. Thanks.

For more information about Japanese prints and culture please visit our other web site at http://www.printsofjapan.com/.

Wallace Stevens – first stanza of Anecdote of the Abnormal

First, by way of an explanation, I am somewhat tired of doing research all of the time. Don’t get me wrong: research is my favorite pastime. In fact, it is my favorite all around time filler. However, every once in a while I need a vacation. Camping used to fill the bill, but not so much anymore. Now I just need to move on to something a little less taxing. So, I have picked on hydrangeas. Why? Because ever since I was a wee tot I have been mesmerized, transported, distracted and otherwise fascinated and engrossed by these plants. Not so much so that I cared to make a full on study of them. Not even a not so full on study. But, what I must say, is that whenever I see them in situ, in nature, in glorious blooming profusion in all of their resplendency I smile – maybe not outwardly, but always, dare I say it?, spiritually. They always distract me for that blissful moment when the rest of the world falls away and beauty reigns supreme. And, not only that, they never look real to me, but who cares? Not I.

  Pink hydrangea image as posted at Flickr by alasam. There is a note accompanying this photo that states that hydrangeas are blue if grown in an acidic soil, but pink or purple if in one that is alkaline.

“I ABSOLUTELY ADORE HYDRANGEAS!” This is a quote from me today on December 18, 2011 if it really matters.

  This image is a somewhat cropped version of a photo posted at Flickr by fritzmb.

“I ABSOLUTELY LOATHE HYDRANGEAS!” This is a recent quote from Madonna. I was unaware of this until yesterday when I was consulting with my hydrangea guru (my only real hydrangea guru, so far) who told me what she said. I went to YouTube and watched the 16 second video in which someone (unseen) handed a large, long-stemmed hydrangea to a seated Madonna who promptly placed it on the floor beside her and was then heard to say her now scurrilous remark. Below is a photo of Madonna which was posted by David Shankbone at commons.wikimedia.org. Next to that is another photo of hydrangea flowers posted at Flickr by Point and Shoot Kinda Gal. Who, in their right mind, couldn’t love these blossoms?

In Chinese art and culture – Joseph Needham quoted a 13th century text which described the chü-pa-hsien or ‘assembly-of-the-eight-immortals-plant’. The Chinese characters for the Eight Taoist Immortals are 八仙 (Ba Xian) while the characters for the hydrangea are 八仙花 (Ba Xian hua). This is a curious bit of information on a number of levels, but mainly it interests me because  the Chinese term is not a one which was adopted by the Japanese at a time when so much else was. Of course, one reason may lie in the age of these names in both China and Japan. Only those with greater skills than mine can answer this. For example, how old is the Japanese term for hydrangea, ajisai? Maybe it predates the earliest Japanese contact with the Chinese. (My guess is that it doesn’t.) Well, guess what: I have dug a little deeper and it would seem I was most probably wrong. In the Kodansha Encyclopedia it says: “The name ajisai is often applied generically to other species in addition to the Hydrangea macrophylla. References to ajisai in Japanese literature appear as far back as the Man’yoshū, an anthology of poetry completed in the 8th century. Mention of the ajisai usually alludes to the spring rainy season.”

Sumiko Enbutsu in a June 7, 2001 article in The Japan Times says that after the references cited above from the Man’yoshū the hydrangea seemed to be neglected in literary references. We know of two haiku by Basho, but other than that this would seem to be correct. Not only that but she added that “No famous viewing places existed for hydrangea even during the gardening boom of the Edo Period, and it was only after World War II that Meigetsu-in in Kamakura carried out the nation’s first ornamental planting of the flower.” (See our reference to the Meigetsuin further down this page.)

But, for now, let’s go back to the issues raised by the use of the characters for the  ‘Eight Immortals’. Shown below is a 17th c. Chinese bronze in the collection of the British Museum. It shows the Immortals surrounding the main figure of the god of longevity.

  © Trustees of the British Museum

What has really amazed me while doing this research on the 八仙花 is that it led me to another discovery. I already knew about a glorious period of Chinese porcelain in the 17th century during the reign of Yongzhen when some of the most exquisite pieces were created. What I didn’t know was that was that one of the  dishes I most admired was indirectly linked to the Eight Immortals by means of its  decorative use of peaches and flying bats. Peaches stand for a fruit which can bring immortality and the bats stand for happiness. On the dis shown below there are 8 peaches in all, front and back.These are visual substitutes for the Eight Immortals and the 5 bats, 3 on the front and two on the back, represent a visual pun for the 5 kinds of good fortune. This is astounding! The Chinese term for the Immortals is linked to both their word for hydrangea and the peaches of longevity. A nice little package of information there.

www.metmuseum.org.

Needham also cites a study by Lang Ying produced in ca. 1540 where the author states that he recognized what he believed to be a wild hydrangea in a Song dynasty (宋代: 960-1279) painting. I wish I knew what it looked like. Needham continued: “It seems that most of the Hydrangea species now in cultivation are of Asian origin. The striking lability of the flower petal colours was early known in China, where horticulturists followed with interest the changes from green to pink and then to blue ending as bluish-green, and actively manipulated the anthocyanins as one can by adding various substances to the soil in which the plants are grown.”

In a book from 1987, Tropical Shrubs, it states that “In China, hydrangea culture reached its peak during the Sung Dynasty…” Only problem: the author doesn’t cite his source.

In an entry on hydrangeas in the Kodansha Encyclopedia of Japan (vol. 3, p. 251) it says: “Formerly the ajisai was thought to be native to China, but Makino Tomitaro (1862-1957) asserted that it was native to Japan and introduced to China long ago; this theory is now widely accepted.”

We’re talking real 14th century gold threads here people – There is a fragment of a late Yuan to early Ming Chinese silk tapestry in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  We know that it is nothing we should turn our noses up at because of its liberal use of gold threads. Even back then the cost of materials and the quality of the production were indications of class structure.  This is definitely not peasant material. The use of hydrangeas as a motif is probably telling us something too, but who knows what that is beyond the mere decorative effect.

    
www.metmuseum.org.

In the Los Angeles County Museum of Art is a later piece silk tapestry or kesi with a touch of paint from the late Qing period. It shows hydrangeas with prunus flowers and what appears to be peonies. See below:

      www.lacma.org

A Chinese print -

   © Trustees of the British Museum

The 17th c. woodcut print shown above and in detail below was designed by Ding Liangxian (Ch. 丁亮先). Not much, if anything,  is known about this artist, but the curatorial notes are interesting on the subject of hydrangeas in Chinese art. They state that in China it was called the “embroidered ball” flower and adds that just such a ball was thrown by an unmarried woman into a crowd of men. The one who caught it became her husband. It also notes that an embroidered ball is often seen under the paw of a male Fu or guardian dog. Fu here means Buddha (佛) – hence the Lion of Buddha.

As you can see the image of the flower is highly embossed. In print jargon this is called gauffrage. Fancy word, French origin.

   © Trustees of the British Museum (detail)

The Mustard Seed Garden Manual (芥子園画伝) was first published in China in 1679 as a template which artists could use to learn how to represent everything from rocks to birds to the leaves on trees. However, it wasn’t ever terribly popular with the Chinese. Then it appeared shortly thereafter in Japan and caught on with the nanga school. As a result it went through several editions. Naturally one type of flower represented was the hydrangea. Below is a detail from one of those publications.

The Chinese term for hydrangea – or one of them – I don’t know for sure – but I do know this is one of them, at least – 八仙花. An ‘embroidered ball flow‘ 繡球花 also translates as hydrangea. A tip: Try copying and pasting these three characters into a Google images search and you will see what I mean. Hydrangeas everywhere.

In Japanese art and culture – There is a lovely print in the British Museum, artist unidentified but of the Maruyama-Shijo school (円山・四条派), showing a blue hydrangea on the right side with the center and left filled with text, poems, which I am unable to read. This print is said to be a surimono (刷り物) which is a curious matter because surimonos generally are related to New Year’s celebrations and hydrangeas are a summer flower.

  © Trustees of the British Museum

There is a hanging scroll painting of hydrangeas attributed to Ogata Kōrin (尾形光琳: 1658–1716) in the Met. He is one of my favorite Japanese artists.

   www.metmuseum.org.

Hydrangeas on Japanese porcelains -There are at least two Nabeshima type porcelain dishes in the Met which are decorated with hydrangeas. The first one is from the 18th century and can be seen below. Also, make sure you look carefully at the presentation of the flowering heads. They differ significantly. There is a truth to nature in both.

  www.metmuseum.org.

Nabeshima ware (鍋島焼 ) is one of my favorite types of Japanese ceramics. I have many favorites, but Nabeshima ware never seems to let me down. In the Met’s  dish from 1780 it follows the great and ancient tradition of Chinese blue and white porcelains as it has been  transmuted by the Japanese soul and by its own elegant style.

   www.metmuseum.org.

On June 19, 2002 a small bowl with a diameter of 8 3/16″, signed Kenzan, dating from ca. 1712-20, with a hydrangea design sold for $57, 054.

Jakuchū and the hydrangea – Jakuchū (若冲: 1716-1800), one of my favorite of all artists anywhere, an artist who seemed to live outside of time and space, thankfully did include a few hydrangea plants in his brilliant paintings and in at least one print. Below is a modest detail from a painting which I believe in in the Imperial collection. After that is a black and white print, because that it the way it was produced, of a insect eaten hydrangea plant from a series of prints called the Gempo Yōka (玄圃瑶華) or Exquisite Flowers from the Mysterious Garden. It dates from 1768.

As a fabric stencil – In Japan artisans developed the katagami (型紙) or paper stencil, a remarkable tool used for fabric designs. Volumes could be written about this craft, but that is not what we are doing here – at this time. However, it should be noted that the most skilled cutters could create any image they desired with the application of their knives to aged paper treated with persimmon juice. That explains the brown color of the paper. Below is an example from the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art dating from the 19th century before the Meiji Restoration in 1868.  Before you look I have to warn you that the image may look a bit out of focus. That is not your problem. It has more to do with the difficulty involved in photographing these stencils and how they ride unevenly above their background sheet set there for better contrast.

      www.metmuseum.org.

At Harvard at the Arthur M. Sackler Museum there is another katagami example with a different hydrangea motif. It is believed to be from either the 19th century or the 20th.

   © Harvard University

There is a Meiji period (1868-1912) furisode (振袖) at the Met. It is decorated sparsely with hydrangeas and cherry blossoms. The techniques include resist-dying and paint on silk. Below shows the full front of the robe followed by a detail of some of the hydrangeas.

   www.metmuseum.org.

   (detail view) www.metmuseum.org.

Hiroshige’s hydrangeas – In the early to mid 1830s Hiroshige produced a number of  ‘bird and flower’ woodblock prints which included hydrangeas. Below are three examples. The first one, a magnificent example, is from the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. The other two are  from the van Vleck collection at the Chazen Museum in Madison, Wisconsin.

  www.mfa.org

           Chazen Museum, University of Wisconsin, Madison

Another Hiroshige from ca. 1843-47, and also in the collection in Boston, is more crudely printed, but worth showing anyway because it includes a snail. This is important because hydrangeas are thought of as rainy season flowers and that is when the snails really show themselves. To the left of that one is another Hiroshige kingfisher with hydrangeas from the same collection. Obviously a subject to his liking. (The difference in the sizes is due more to my inexperience with the graphics here than an actual difference in sizes. In fact, they are almost exactly the same height.)

                 www.mfa.org

The hydrangea in other art forms in Japan – I own a beautiful 20th century wooden box decorated with a pomegranate motif. If there is a rarer  example than the hydrangea in Japanese art then it is probably the pomegranate. But I also own a small but exceedingly heavy cast iron cinnabar paste holder in the shape of a square persimmon – a far more common motif. Fortunately I found a beautiful box in the collection of the Rijsmuseum decorated with hydrangeas and a butterfly. It is said to date from ca. 1675 to ca. 1725 even though it has a seal for Ritsuo who died earlier in the 18th century. Below is the box followed by a detail of the top.

   © Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

(detail) © Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Hydrangeas in traditional Japanese literature or the lack thereof – Numerous plants, flowers and grasses, dot the landscape of Japanese literature like a field in full bloom. They are often used as veiled references  to human emotions and longings. An image conjured up the memory of a love lost long ago or… But not the hydrangea. Why not? The answer is unknowable. Fortunately my overall-guru Eikei (英渓) has come to my rescue with translations of three poems. The first is by Fujiwara no Shunzei (藤原俊成: 1114-1204 ), a 12th century poet and compiler:

Even in summer’s tedium
my heart is moved;
The moon mirrored
in the dewdrops
on four hydrangea petals.

The next two are by Matsuo Bashō (松尾芭蕉:  1644-94):

紫陽花や藪を小庭の別座敷

ajisai ya
yabu wo koniwa no
betsu zashiki

Hydrangeas adorn
the little woodland garden -
a splendid parlor!

紫陽花や帷子時の薄浅黄

ajisai ya
katabira doki no
usu asagi

Hydrangeas – pale blue
like the hemp cloth
of summer kimono.

Hydrangeas and the Buddha connection – On April 8th – May 8th in some places – liquid is poured over the head of a small statue of Buddha. One of his hands points toward the heavens and the other toward the earth as an indication that he is the universal ‘deity’. Often the liquid is amacha (甘茶) or hydrangea tea as it is called in Japan. The kanji characters could be translated literally as ‘sweet tea’ because of the ostensible sweetness of the hydrangea leaves. This annual ceremony is called kanbutsu (潅仏会) which loosely translated means ‘pour onto Buddha gathering’. This bath is symbolic of the bath given the new-born Buddha. Sometimes the water is simply perfumed.

In Ken Fern’s Plants for a Future… it says: “The leaves contain phellodulcin, a very sweet substance that can be used as a sugar substitute.”

Below is a photo I found at Flickr. It was originally taken by Sgt. Opal Vaughan in Korea and shows the ritual bathing of a statue of Buddha. I have trimmed it somewhat.

The Meigetsuin (明月院) Temple in Kamakura is also known as ‘the hydrangea temple’ or Ajisaidera (紫陽花寺). In a Michelin Le Guide Vert  it says: “«L’Ermitage de la lune brillante», Meigetsu-in, a été fondé en 1160 par Yamanouchi Tsunetoshi pour le repos de l’âme de son père, Toshimichi, disparu dans la bataille de Heiji (1159) opposant les clans Minamoto et Taira. Le site est repris par Hojo Tokiyori (1227-1263), cinquième régent de Kamakura, qui, à sa retraite, le transforme en un temple bouddhique.”

Below is a photo of a seated Buddha holding a bowl of hydrangeas. It was posted at Flickr by Ryosuke Yagi. Next to it is a closeup of one of the temples hydrangea florets.

In the Mimurodo Temple (三室戸寺) in Uji City, Kyoto Prefecture there is a 10,000 sq. meter garden with 10,000 hydrangea plants representing 30 different cultivars. Another source says the garden is 16,500 square meters. Does it really matter? Below is a photo by sakura_chihaya+ of one small part of that garden. It was posted at Flickr.

A greater sense of the lushness of this garden can be seen in this photo which was originally posted at Flickr by cyber0515. Just for interest, and in case you want to look up some things yourself, a hydrangea garden is referred to as an ajisai-en (紫陽園).

Little known hydrangea facts – or non-facts passing themselves off as facts – According to some sources the first hydrangeas arrived in England thanks to Sir Joseph Banks (ジョシュア・レイノルズ: 1743-1820) in 1790. Another source gives the date as 1789 when Banks brought this plant to Europe from China for the first time. (Below is a portrait of Sir Joseph painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds in 1771-73.)

   © National Portrait Gallery, London

This shouldn’t seem likely considering the fact that hydrangeas already appeared in Dutch still lifes in the 17th century. Take for example a painting by Jan Davidsz. de Heem (1606-84) from the Rijksmuseum. Below is full image followed by a detail of the hydrangea (hortensia in Dutch).

     © Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam   © Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Abraham Mignon (1640-79), a German born pupil of J. D. de Heem, sprinkled some of his paintings with hydrangeas. Mignon was supremely talented but died young which also helps us date the early use of these flowers prior to their known introduction into England. Below is a detail from one of his painting which I found at commons.wikimedia.

On the other hand, it would seem that there is a lot of truth in the Joseph Banks story. In Gifts from the Gardens of China by Jane Kilpatrick it notes that a shipment of plants from China in early 1788 included a hydrangea shrub. This shrub “…has since become one of the most familiar of all our garden plants…. However the most important parent of the ornamental hydrangeas grown in Chinese gardens was Hydrangea macrophylla, a species that is actually native to to Japan and the first cultivated varieties seem to have been developed in Japan from a wild subspecies known as H. macrophylla var. normalis…” A little later Kilpatrick adds that “The variety introduced to Kew in 1788 is now called ‘Joseph Banks’ and seems to have developed as a sport, or naturally occurring mutation, of the wild H. macrophylla var. normalis. It produces very large rounded flower heads that open greenish-yellow before turning pale lilac-pink as they age and the green colouring astonished all those who first saw the plant flowering in the London Customs House just after it had been unloaded from the ship.” Those round green balls of flowers still astonish me and always will.

For decades it was only the ‘Joseph Banks’ type of hydrangea known to the English gardeners. Kilpatrick speculates that this may have been the only kind exported from Canton. The ‘mops‘ head type was all they knew until 1879 when the ‘lacecaps‘ (gaku or 額  in Japanese) started arriving from Japan. “During the nineteenth century other cultivated round-headed hydrangeas arrived in France from Japan and it was only when French nurserymen began to use them to develop new hortensia varieties that ‘Joseph Banks’ was joined in our gardens by the exuberant brightly coloured hortensia hydrangeas that are so familiar today.”

My question: Considering the centuries long social and commercial intercourse between the English and the Low Countries why hadn’t the hydrangea, which was so obviously displayed in continental still lifes, been grown in British gardens at an earlier date? To bolster my argument/question there is a watercolor study of  a hydrangea by Jan van Huysum, another great Dutch still life painter, in the collection of the British Museum. The British Museum was established by an act of parliament in 1753 when it accepted the bequest of Sir Hans Soane (1660-1753). This watercolor, seen below, was part of that bequest and therefore was in the museum from day one – approximately 37 years before the arrival of the ‘Joseph Banks’ hydrangeas from China. It just gets curiouser and curiouser, doesn’t it?

   © Trustees of the British Museum

In 1851 a cotton fabric produced in Lancashire for curtains, chair or sofa coverings was displayed at the Great Exhibition by Jackson and Graham, a popular high-end furnishing shop. One critic slammed this fabric because it was too true to nature, but I think it is beautiful. Besides, it is rich with hydrangeas.

   ©Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Clearly I am not alone in my admiration for the hydrangea – Paulette, a great French milliner who designed hats for the likes of Garbo, Piaf and the Duchess of Windsor and who also worked for Schiaparelli, Chanel and Chardin, made this ‘fetching’ hydrangea hat in ca.. 1955. It was bequeathed to the Victoria and Albert Museum by Ernestine Carter who had been a fashion editor for Harper’s Bazaar.

  ©Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Just because – I have included a still life with hydrangeas by Fantin-Latour because I consider him the greatest European 19th century flower painter. You may disagree, but don’t bother. It won’t help you. My feet are set in stone on this one. The image below is from the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago.

©The Art Institute of Chicago

Original text: The photo shown below was posted at Flickr by Lindley Ashline and it blows my mind as much as it did the first Englishmen who saw just such a plant. Correction: An expert on hydrangeas, wrote to me to point out that the image shown below is actually a viburnum. After a 5 minute search I have no doubt that he is right and once again I have been wrong. Not that it bothers me too much – especially considering that it is being corrected here. Besides, if I got upset every time I made a mistake I would spend my entire life completely flustered. Nevertheless, I have decided to leave the image here for two reasons: 1) I was completely gobsmacked when I saw it and 2) it lays bare my flaws which should act as a reminder to all visitors to this site that whatever I say is often as far from gospel as one can possible get. That is why you should never, never, never quote me.

Note: This image, which I reduced from the original, was the first one posted at Flickr when I did a search for ‘hydrangeas’.

The first appearance of the word ‘hydrangea’ in English, according to the OED was in 1753. The next reference comes from Laura, or the Orphan: A Novel by Mrs. Burton in 1797: “I should like to make… a sonnet upon the lasting bloom of a hydrainger.” That’s right, hydrainger!

Etymologically speaking – Linnaeus was said to have given us the name ‘hydrangea’ from the Greek stem hydr- for water and angeion for vessel.

In most countries the hydrangea is called a hortensia or some variation thereof. In Italian it is ortensia, in Spanish, French, Breton, Danish and Dutch it is  hortensia and in Polish it is hortenja. Even the Russian is close: гортензия. However, the origin of this name is a bit confusing. Oh, what the hell – it is a lot more than confusing. In an article by Sumiko Enbutsu cited above it says that hortensia is named for Queen Hortense of Holland, the mother of Napoleon III. But this may not be correct. In vol. 19-20 of The Gardener’s Monthly it says: “In Europe it was named by the celebrated Commerson [1727-1773], in honor of Madame Hortense Lapante, wife of his most particular friend, M. Lapante, a watchmaker. Commerson first named it Lapantia, but in order that the compliment to Madame Lapante might be the more direct, he changed the name to that of Hortensia, from her Christian name Hortense. The plant was afterwards discovered to be a species of Hydrangea, a genus previously established by Gronovius [1686-1762] : but the name of Hortensia was retained as its specific appellation ; and it is still the common name by which the plant is known in French gardens.”

In The Garden from June 27, 1903 it states: “I believe the specific name of this shrub is really an old generic name given to some of the Hydrangeas by Jussieu in honor of Queen Hortense.” A personal note: I knew that long before there was wikipedia that there was a ton of misinformation out there that gets repeated and repeated and… It is somewhat like the courtroom admonition from a judge: “The jury will now ignore that last damning statement.” Yeah, right.

If you’re confused you don’t hold a candle to my confusion and it just gets worse. Remember how I said that the word ‘hydrangea’ first appeared in English in 1753? Well… the word ‘hortensial’ meaning “of or belonging to a garden” shows up in 1655, 98 years earlier.

More confusion – Several sources say that von Siebold (1796-1866) “…was the first to introduce hydrangea and wisteria to Europe.” How can that be? If you know for sure please fill me in.

A few notes about the hydrangea (aka hortensia) and Western literature -Marcel Proust had a friend, the Comte Robert de Montesquiou-Fezensac, a man who seemed to know everybody worth knowing at the time. One of the Comte’s volumes of poetry was entitled Les Hortensias Bleus. This was pointed out to me by my hydrangea guru who is also my Proust guru and my Byzantine history guru and so much more there isn’t enough space here to list it all.

Blue hydrangeas are mentioned three times in Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf. Whenever Sally Seton would see these flowers she would think of Peter Walsh.

There is a passage in a book by Julian Barnes published in 2005 which says: “So the same week I am reading a book about hydrangeas and learn that the Hortensia may have been named after a young woman called Hortense Barret who went on the Bougainville expedition with the botanist Commerson.” Remember Commerson mentioned just a few lines above in this post? Now we have a third suggestion as to where the name hortensia came from. Great [said sarcastically]. Will this ever be resolved? Not here probably. By the way, there was a woman on that expedition who was said to have been Commerson’s assistant except he thought his assistant was a young man. Otherwise he would never have taken him, er… I mean her, along with him. It is also said that once revealed Commerson came to accept the fact and when they got back to wherever they were getting back to his assistant became his faithful housekeeper for many years. Trust me, I couldn’t make this stuff up if I tried.

I have a lovely neighbor who has a lovely garden – My neighbor, Joan Sandford, lives behind me and has a stellar garden. When I first moved into my second floor condo/apartment at the end of 2001 I was struck mostly by the view: water, forests, sailboats, Mt. Rainier, snow-capped peaks. It is glorious. The people who lived where Joan does now had a decent but non-descript yard with a fairly large, but dying madrona tree which I could almost touch from my balcony. When Joan moved in everything changed. First the tree came out. It had given me shade and privacy. I groused privately to friends. Then the backhoe arrived and tore up everything leaving a huge  unsightly mound of dirt where the tree had once stood. Next a crew came in and the next Spring there were flowers everywhere the mound of dirt had been. Lovely flowers like the field of poppies seen below. Things were looking better.

But soon the backhoe was back in an even bigger way and everything including the newly planted area was being dug up again. I am a naturally suspicious person and often think the worst until I am proven wrong. Over the next couple of months I saw areas being marked off, a concrete foundation being poured, a garage like structure going up which left me staring down on a shingled rooftop where ‘my personal madrona tree’  and grass had once stood. Other changes quickly followed. A large wire fence went up. Within that area smaller plots of land were being marked off. A sprinkling system was installed.And slowly but surely a huge number of plants were being planted including one young sapling which I was sure would grow to obstruct the best part of my view within a few short years. I was just this side of livid.

This was more than I could stand. I had introduced myself to Joan earlier, but now we had to talk – seriously. So, I spoke with her and found that she was completely civilized, decent, reasonable and cooperative. Much more than one could ever expect. If she said she was going to do something she did it. A very unusual trait to be found in homo sapiens, i.e., neighbors or anyone else for that matter. She had the sapling removed and replaced with a much slower growing and more showy, flowering tree thus winning my loyalty forever.

After a couple of years of watching her garden grow Joan took pity on me. I asked her one day if she would let me do some maintainance work for her for free – you know, weeding and trimming and dead-heading and such, and she said yes. I was in heaven and still am. I miss such things living in a condo/apartment.

Joan is exceedingly personable and has a great sense of humor and a genuine joie de vivre. A real class act. The  ‘garage’ turned out to be a studio where she does her art work – which she sells, in case you are interested. Last week I mentioned that I would like her to look at my latest posting because it was about hydrangeas and before you could say Jack Robinson she did. As I was about to leave she showed me a watercolor of hydrangeas she had done. I asked her for permission to post it here and she agreed. I think it is a fitting way to end this section. Surely you must agree.

    © Joan Sandford

Note to reader: No post is ever finished. So, if you come back here some time in the future there may very well be new information and/or images. I know this because I already have plans to make new additions in the next few days. Today is January 4, 2012. You’ll see.

For more information about Japanese prints and culture please visit our other web site at http://www.printsofjapan.com/