Though Kiyonaga was a pupil of Kiyomitsu, little of that artist's influence is visible in his work. It is true that his earliest sheets, actors in _hoso-ye_ form, are precisely like Kiyomitsu's; but he appears to have abandoned this style very quickly, and most of his early actor-prints resemble Shunsho's more than his master's. In certain of his early works Harunobu's influence is evident; and the long-dead Moronobu's manner of line-work sometimes appears. From Masanobu he perhaps inherited the grand carriage of his women. Later, Shigemasa's style influenced him, and Koriusai had a marked effect upon his development. He absorbed inspiration from all these artists, gathering to himself the best in the heritage of the past, and then struck out with a boldness that is never bizarre, an originality that is never affected, into his own natural and masterful manner. [Illustration: KIYONAGA: THE COURTESAN SHIZUKA WITH ATTENDANTS IN THE PEONY GARDEN AT ASAKUSA. Left-hand sheet of a triptych. Size 15 × 10. Signed _Kiyonaga ga_. _Plate 27._] By about 1777 he had developed his distinctive style. Its most obvious characteristic lies in the new quality of the figures he depicts. His types perhaps grew out of those of Koriusai; but he combined with Koriusai's richness a monumental quality to find the equal of which we must go back to the Primitives. It is his union of the pre-Harunobu dignity with the Harunobu grace and colour, in a superb and easy synthesis of his own--a truly grand style--that has made him by common consent the foremost Ukioye artist. The type of figure which Kiyonaga created is expressive of a more stable equilibrium of spiritual forces than any seen before. It embodies a normality of attitude characteristic of the great culminating periods of art. The primitive artist expresses himself in figures whose mannerisms and constraint suggest the limitations of his technique; the decadent artist, as we shall see later, pours his visions into figures of a slender langour and relaxation that parallel his own weariness and satiety; but the artist of the prime draws large-limbed, wholesome, magnificently normal figures as the symbols of his magnificently normal mind.