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Paper short abstract:

Jack Hillier, a scholar of Edo-period illustrated books and ukiyo-e prints, was also an advocate of ‘Shijō’ school painted and printed works. His 1974 book, The Uninhibited Brush, presented an original insight into the field and had a significant impact on both private and public collecting.

Paper long abstract:

In orthodox Japanese art history discourse, Maruyama Ōkyo (1733-1795) and Go Shun (Matsumura Gekkei, 1752-1811), the two founders of the Maruyama and Shijō schools respectively, have consistently been recognised among the most influential artists in the late Edo period. They are regarded highly often for having brought a fresh breeze into the traditions of Japanese painting with their new approaches to realism and naturalism. This stance is evident since the establishment of art history of Japan as a modern scientific discipline in the late 19th century.

Such a textbook view of Ōkyo, Go Shun and their talented pupils who enhanced the popularity and longevity of their style, however, did not necessarily induce the warmest appreciation of their works among Western collectors, although they collected Maruyama-Shijō paintings as representative specimens of Japanese art. Jack Hillier’s substantial publication on what he calls ‘Shijō style’, The Uninhibited Brush (1974), arguably, ushered in a change in attitude.

Hillier considered their works across various media – paintings, prints (surimono) and illustrated books – to cover a range of the artists’ activities in response to their clients’ requests, many of whom were urban bourgeois active in clubs for cultural pursuits. He also taught his readers how to articulate the sense of appreciation we find in Maruyama-Shijō works: brush strokes, amateurism, eccentricity, naturalism and lyricism.

Hillier himself amassed a large collection of Edo-period illustrated books, which are now in the British Museum. Also collected by him were paintings and calligraphy that would have fit within his understanding of the ‘Shijō style’, which are in the collections of the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, and the British Museum. Based on the items he collected and his publications, this paper will reassess his view of Maruyama-Shijō art and will review the direction that acquisitions at the British Museum have taken since Hillier’s rediscovery of this field with his sensitive and meticulous approach.