Quite a few years ago, someone had a blog where they identified at least some of the vases Yoshijiro Urushibara made use of in his flower prints. It was not a pottery I was familiar with, I don't remember what it was called and for some reason the blogger has since removed the post. But this said a lot about the reproductive training Urushibara had received with the firm of Shimbi Shoin he worked for in Tokyo. He had not only to reproduce the work of artists to a high standard in colour woodcut, he was also been trained to imitate their styles. But this was not unique to the workshops of Japan. Frank Brangwyn once complained that British arts schools did nothing but train clever imitators. On a more subtle level, when George Moore tactlessly described Edgar Degas as 'a revolutionary painter', Degas response was, 'We are tradition'. And it is that French 'we' that is so important once we begin to try and assess the work of Urushibara with any seriousness because in the current age of pick 'n' mix pronouns, Ursuhibara was certainly in the plural.
I wilfully misrepresenting what Degas meant when he referred to himself in the first person plural. In common with other British artists, Urushibara spent a fair amount of of time to-ing and fro-ing between London and Paris where the people he knew were artists in the French decorative tradition. London itself was home to other French artists, notably Theodore Roussel who was president of the Graver Printers in Colour. It was Roussel who had begun making prints of vases of flowers in the 1890s and who exhibited colour versions of them when the Graver Printers had their first exhibitions, I am saying this all over again because not everyone who actually reads what I say was convinced the first time.
Far from being copyist, the best of Urushibara's flower prints like Chrysanthemums (above) an early tour-de-force from 1922, drew on both modern French decorative art and the Japanese tradition of bird and flowers prints they called kacho-e This print not only depicts a vase of orange spider chrysanthemums, it suggests November. The icy atmosphere, the frosty table, the frozen dribbles of glaze are all chosen with the care of a very sensitive practitioner where the interior of his studio is transformed into a wintry garden. At the time, Urushibara's work on Brangwyn's drawings were aptly described as 'translations'. When it came to his own original work, the sense of transformation was greater. Everywhere the power of suggestion is at work, notably in the vase itself. This has turned into a tuber, lifted from the earth ready for storing in the greenhouse. With this print, everything is turned around. The studio has become a landscape, what was contained in the earth has become a container.
Peonies made about three years later in c 1925 works in a similar way but in two versions, the one above and the well-known aniline blue version. I like the way the table suggests the earth in the blue version but I prefer this one mainly because Urushibara gets closer to engraving and the way the decoration on the vase suggests a garden more clearly. You can also seen i this print why modern Japanese printmakers have adopted the European difficult technique of mezzotint. This was widely used in ritaon by professional engravers reproducing paintings or designs by fine artists in much the same way craftsmen at Shimbi Shoin did. One strength of mezzotint is that is allows for fine gradations of tone, which makes it very suggestive of atmosphere.
Different rules apply in Japanese fine art because the sensibility is a different one. Take Dahlias (above). A friend once had the pale version on loan for a number of years and had it hanging above his television so I came to know it very well. (It was also the way I came to recognise Urushibara's signature). Unfortunately, the edition was probably only twenty so it is now very uncommon. This may be because dark prints like this were less popular. Nevertheless, this is another personal favourite and suggests exactly the way Urushibara's sensibility worked. Which modern British artist would combine montbretia, dahlias and chestnut leaves or would have used two receptacles instead of one so he could place the larger vase off-centre?
Unless you own a copy of Hilary Chapman's Yoshijiro Urushibara, you will probably not have seen the darker version because this is the first time it has appeared online. Despite all its obvious faults, Hilary's book is worth buying (and was reviewed on Modern Printmakers in 2017 when it first came out). I have had to take a photo of the reproduction in the book, not ideal because the light reflects off the glossy paper. I have included an illustration of the pale version, too, so you can decided for yourself which you like best. Either way, I would buy the one that turned up first and then the other one when it turned up afterwards. If only.
Hilary Chapman & Libby Horner Yoshijiro Urushibara, a Japanese printmaker in London is available in softback in the UK on Abe for £52 and on Amazon Books for £56.
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