Page 45 - Studio International - September 1967

Below: Studies of peasants
ink on paper, 5½ x 4¼ in.
Right: Seated girl, her breast exposed
ink on paper, 7 x 5 in.

selected and tastefully mounted as the shows at this small Huish, is redolent of an old guard 'academic' approach
but vital gallery always are, is an opportunity for exer- with the same criteria as would have been applied to a
cising both one's historical sense and one's susceptibility western master's drawings. Drawings were included in
to Hokusai's idiom—or rather, idioms, for few artists have general exhibitions of Hokusai's work at the British
been able to vary their style at will as he did. The exhi- Museum in 1924, and again in the splendid Centenary
bits, few in number as they are, cover many of the Exhibition of 1949 (the artist was born in 1760 and died
differing moods, techniques and styles of Hokusai's in 1849), and Basil Gray ended his Introduction to the
brush-drawing from the expressive sketch of the two catalogue 'We may find in the work of Hokusai a vision
boozing-partners supporting each other, where the of the grandeur of ordinary man when seen against a
slovenly line, like thick speech, conveys their tipsiness cosmic background triumphing over circumstances by
perfectly, to the seated girl with ha nd raised to take a cup, mere courage, or, better, a sense of the deeper rhythm of
in which the line is purposefully calligraphic, and with- life.' In 1954 the Arts Council put on an exhibition of
out our realizing it shifts us nearer to the Japanese Hokusai's drawings and water-colours, but this was the
standpoint, to whom brush-line and ink-tone are prime last devoted solely to his brush-drawings in this country.
factors, to admire it. The internationalizing process in the arts, whereby
Hokusai is one of the few Japanese masters whose Japan borrows from our present as we from her past,
drawings have been accorded solo exhibitions in the makes us no longer diffident about accepting Hokusai as
west. The exhibitions have been more frequent in France a great artist in our estimation, who, since the 'Sixties
than here, but it is interesting to note that the first major of the last century, has been an influence, not openly
show in England was at the Fine Art Society in 1890, the vouched but tacitly absorbed, on British as on western
introductory note to the catalogue for which, by Marcus art generally. q
107