Hiroshige's
Trees Transformed Van Gogh's Art
(But not
the modern Art of Bonsai)
Vincent
stared intensely at the Hackberry tree. He had concluded that he
should copy one or two of the prints in Hiroshige's One
Hundred Famous Views of Edo
to get the feel of the style that he found so alluring. Although he
knew that he would paint trees in the manner of this woodcut
masterpiece in the future, he was put off by the fox spirits that
surrounded the tree, a theme which was not capable of being directly
observed.
This woodcut, “New Year's Eve Foxfires at the Changing Tree, ōji”,
is generally
included among the "best three” of the collection. Hiroshige
Andō normally depicted the realities of the observed world in his
work, and that appealed to Vincent and the other
Impressionists.
 |
| Hiroshige Andō “New Year's Eve Foxfires at the Changing Tree, ōji” A bonsaist would be proud to have styled such a gorgeous Informal Upright. |
So,
he decided to copy two other prints from the same collection;. One of
the prints, Vincent decided, would, of course, be a tree, and the
other an urban scene. This was in 1887, and Van Gogh
painted “Flowering Plum Tree”
(based on “The
Plum Orchard at Kameido” in that same Edo collection,
a favorite of Van Gogh's).
The result is decidedly mixed, but it was, after all, his first
attempt. He painted frames around the orchard in which he drew
invented pseudo-Japanese characters. His use of colors was unlike
the original and he had not yet grasped the subtlety of the Japanese
use of complimentary colors; his use of green next to yellow next to
red is garish. But, he had the correct goal.
 |
Hiroshige Andō
Plum Estate, Kameido
|
 |
| Vincent van Gogh Flowering Plum Tree 1887 |
He
wrote, from Arles:
“I
want to use colors that compliment each other, that cause each other
to shine brilliantly... But whatever they say, the most ordinary
Japanese prints, colored in flat tones, seem admirable to me for the
same reason as Rubens and Veronese...
I envy the Japanese artists for the
incredible neat clarity which all their works have. It is never
boring and you never get the impression that they work in a hurry. It
is as simple as breathing; they draw a figure with a couple of
strokes with such an unfailing easiness as if it were as easy as
buttoning one's waist-coat." (Vincent to Theo, 24
September 1888)
He wrote to his sister from Arles:
"Theo wrote that he offered
you Japanese woodblock prints. That is certainly the best way to
understand which direction the light and colorful painting has taken.
Here I need no Japanese woodblock prints, because I am here in Japan.
This is why I only have to open my eyes and paint the impressions
that I receive.
With
the opening of Japan in 1854, after two hundred years of isolation,
Japanese art and culture were introduced to the West, initiating a
fascination that began in France (where it was called Japonisme
) and
Holland – the Dutch had the island of
Deshima in Nagasaki Bay,
that was primarily a trading venture - before spreading throughout
Europe and America.
Ukiyo-e (the “Floating World”, a euphemism for the
“pleasure” districts such as the Yoshiwara)
prints were particularly popular with Impressionist and
Post-Impressionist painters and were studied and used as inspiration
by artists such as Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Edgar Degas, Mary
Cassatt, Paul Gauguin, and James McNeill Whistler, as well as Van
Gogh. It didn't hurt that the ukiyo-e
prints were very inexpensive, often serving as packing
material for use in
shipping crates of ceramics. Monet avidly collected the
prints and displayed them in his home. Vincent Van Gogh, who with his
brother Theo owned over four hundred wood block prints, organized
exhibitions of them. The
other Impressionists were taken by other ukiyo-e
print subjects: Whistler by bridges and other structures(mostly on
the Thames), Lautrec by brothels and Montmartre cafe life with its
dance-halls and cabarets (much like the Yoshiwara),
Monet by flowers, gardens and, briefly by geisha (he famously grafted
his wife Camille's head on the robes of a geisha),
Degas by women performing their daily rituals, Mary Cassatt by women
and their children, Gaugin the apparent simplicity of life. But Van
Gogh concentrated on trees and landscapes, as did Hiroshige.Hiroshige and his “One Hundred Famous Views of Edo” occupy a special place in the Western reception of ukiyo-e. To many artists, prints from this series became important models for their works. Individual images were either copied, as with Van Gogh's oil based on “Plum Estate, Kameido”. Often they were more general sources of inspiration, evident in the adaptation of a particular landscape element or effect. After viewing another group of Hiroshige's prints at an exhibition in Paris in 1853, Pissarro wrote in a letter "the Japanese artist Hiroshige is a marvelous Impressionist."
And Bonsai?
By now you are probably wondering just what these prints and
now-famous artists have to do with bonsai. It
seems to me that Bonsaists only consult other Bonsaists, or their
work, in order to determine what is “good” or “bad” about a
tree. The Impressionists,
evidently, had more open minds. I thought it might be interesting to
look at Japanese graphic art in order to understand something about
what sort of tree Japanese artists thought was artistically
interesting. It seems self-evident, doesn't it? The art I chose to
examine was ukiyo-e woodblock prints, because they are of such high
artistic merit, and because that merit was validated by so many of
the best artists in Europe, and especially because there are so many
examples extant. I make a few assumptions about your mindset. First,
I am assuming that you consider bonsai an art. Second, although of
Chinese origin, that the Japanese are, or have been, the most admired
of bonsai artists. Third, that you agree that Japanese graphic
artists are good judges of what other form, in Japanese culture, is
good art. Fourth, that you agree that widely admired Western artists
(such as The Impressionists) are good judges of what is good
in Japanese art, and validate the choices of the Japanese.For simplicity, let's stay with the prints of Hiroshige Andō and his Edo collection, and add a few of Van Gogh's paintings of trees – all in the mode of Japonisme. Although this collection is of “famous views” because of his specialization in landscapes and trees, he is the Japanese artist of the most interest to Bonsaists. I'll also add a few other prints (segments of prints, really) that you may find surprising.
For starters, let's look at both versions of “The Plum Orchard at Kameido”, Hiroshige's and Van Gogh's copy, above. Note that the primary center of attraction is the vertical suckers that the plums produce. And, they have so few flowers. Would you create a bonsai with such suckers? Then look at the broken major branches on the trees. Are they attractive? The plum tree has the habit of ground layering (a branch bends down to the ground, sends out roots and, from those roots, other trees grow.) Would you create a bonsai grouping like this, calling it a “raft”, if you will? Do you have the testicular fortitude to do these things and display the bonsai in public? I freely admit that I do not. Yet, we have proof that earlier Japanese bonsai masters did. The wood block print below is of just such a bonsai (not an orchard, however) created by Ippitsusai Bunchō, in 1770. It has everything that is in the Hiroshige print, and that I would be fearful of allowing in a bonsai. The sprouting suckers, the broken major branch (don't confuse that with an artfully placed jin), the new child tree sprouting from the ground, random rotted holes in the trunk, new branch suckers at odd angles. Would you do those things? But, those things are all characteristic of real plum trees not manipulated by Man, as Hiroshige has shown us. Below is a segment of a woodblock print by Ippitsusai Bunchō showing just such a bonsai. He was not alone in depicting such trees. Hiroshige himself included such a plum bonsai in a woodcut of 1820. I just won't include more of them in order to save space. But, note, too, how so many of the "rules" are broken: No single apex, no First, Second or Back Branch, no "triangle". Neither artists' depictions follow the "rules", and they are very similar.
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| Ippitsusai Bunchō 1770 |
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| Hiroshige 1820 |
Just
one more example with which to question ourselves. The following
print is called Moon
Pine, Ueno, also from Hiroshige's One
Hundred Famous Views of Edo.
From the Brooklyn Museum (my insertion in brackets): “In Edo, there
was a particular taste for naming trees that were distinguished by
their age or their form. Pine trees, which tend to live long and grow
in strange shapes, were the most common of these. The example seen
here was called the Moon Pine, not only because of its full, round
shape but also because [it was believed] one could discern various
phases of the moon by looking at the tree from different angles. One
twentieth-century commentary also referred to it as the Rope Pine,
presumably because of its resemblance to a loop of rope.”
 |
Hiroshige Andō
Moon Pine, Ueno
|
So,
this is a naturally occurring form of branch in old Japanese Pines.
But would you or I create such a branch? When I see something like
this on a tree, I immediately think that it is a product of one of
the mass producers of imported bonsai who synthetically create
“movement” in trees by wrapping them, when young, around sticks,
to hasten the time when they can be sold to some unwary soul. But,
yet again, old Japanese bonsai masters created such bonsai. Here is
one in a print by Utamaro Kitagawa, c.1804. It is not a vertical
loop, but it is a horizontal one, which, in my mind, is worse.
 |
| Utamaro Kitagawa, c.1804 |
So what?
In
what follows, I explicitly exclude those Bonsaists who create
sculptures of their own devising from trees – almost exclusively
conifers. The designs of these trees owe very little to the
categories one sees in treatises like John Naka's volumes. The artists
seem to be primarily from Southern Europe and they very often collect
their material from the wild, and then bend it to their wills. One
wonders, however, how long these trees are intended to appear as they
do soon after creation, or how long the trees will actually live.
Only time will tell.
What
does that say about us the rest of us as Bonsaists? We, including me,
are timid and follow the path of least resistance. We are not very
experimental and we tend to make trees that are “pretty” and that
look like large old trees we see in the middle of open spaces, such
as parks. The majority of my trees can be classified as “Informal
Uprights”, Mōyogi. That style probably accounts for the majority
of bonsai throughout the USA. There is a saying in our club that
“Windswepts never win contests”. So, I have only one of those.
(However, I have seen one or two pictures of Windswepts that appear
to be caught in the very instant of being blasted by a gust. They
seem wonderful to me, but I do not think I have the talent or skill
or patience to create one. I wish I did.) Broom style is unbearably
boring to me and I have made none. Few people do. Although there are
two or three Cascades in our club, I have none. One Cascade looks
just like any other Cascade to me. I certainly do not have broken
branches on any of my deciduous trees, although hollow trunks are
attractive and I, and some of my fellow club members have trees with
that feature. One bougainvillea is a nearly completely empty shell,
yet flowers and is quite healthy – a very attractive tree denoting
great age. But, major branches just broken off, as on those plums?
No. Definitely not.
Maybe,
just maybe, I am merely taken with the forms of trees I see every day
around me, and maybe that is true of most other bonsaists. We like
what we know, what we are familiar with. We create what we like. We
have another saying in our club. “Every bonsai must tell a story.”
Perhaps the stories that Informal Uprights tell are known to me. I,
for one, truly adore Hiroshige's Hackberry Informal Upright we see
above, feel that I know its story, and feel very comfortable with the
slight breakage of “rules” in the crossing branches in front of
the trunk. Score one for a very mild, not wild, departure from normative
values. I also admire the olives that Van Gogh created as a companion
to his “Starry Night”, Olive Trees in a
Mountainous Landscape. Perhaps
because they are all sinuous Informal Uprights. Van Gogh obviously
was taken with that style, too. Why do you create the styles of
bonsai that you do? Have you thought about it? |
Vincent Van Gogh
Olive
Trees in a Mountainous Landscape
June 1889 |
"The olive trees with the white cloud and the
mountains behind, as well as the rise of the moon and the night
effect, are exaggerations from the point of view of the general
arrangement; the outlines are accentuated as in some old woodcuts."
Vincent to Theo, June 1889.
Of course, he meant old Japanese woodcuts.
Acknowledgment: All the images of bonsai from partial
woodblocks are from http://www.phoenixbonsai.com
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