Grace and delicacy mark the idyllic compositions of Harunobu and his successor Koriusai (the face of the Japanese woman is the face of Harunobu, Koriusai, Shunsho and his school). M. de Goncourt says: “The Japanese woman is lithe, little, and rounded. Out of this woman Utamaro created the slender, svelte woman of his prints,—a woman who has the delicate outlines of an early Watteau sketch. Before Utamaro, Kiyonaga had drawn women, larger than nature, but fleshy and thick. The face of the ordinary Japanese woman is short and squat, and except for the inexpressible vivacity and sweetness of the black eyes it is the face which Harunobu, Koriusai and Shunsho represented. Out of this face Utamaro created a long oval. He slid into the traditional treatment of the features a mutinous grace, a naïve astonishment, a spiritual comprehension; and he was the first artist who attempted, while preserving the consecrated traditional lines, to blend with them a human expression, so that his best prints become real portraits. Studying them, we no longer see only the universal, but the individual face, and, unlike the other Japanese artists, he idealizes his countrywoman through the mimicry of her gracious humanity.” The women of Kiyonaga have a more than human dignity and grace, the classic folds of his drapery recalling figures of the Renaissance. The Japanese artist always has an underlying motive in the disposition of his drapery. The most recognizable perhaps are those called “Guantai,” signifying rude, with angular outlines, and “Rintai,” delicate, supple and wavy, like the undulations of a river. In the “Guantai” motive we see the angles of the rocks, even in the most delicate folds of drapery. In “Rintai” no angle is visible. Here wavelike ripples descend, flowing around the feet of the wearer. In these swirls of drapery are realized the Buddhist conceptions of Life in everything,—the lines are moving, sentient, and all but the leading folds that determine the lines of the figure are suppressed. The Japanese painter knows that the true master selects, does not draw all he sees, but concentrates his efforts towards reproducing the lines of movement, and in figures, the lines of the limbs and flowing drapery. In their designs for dresses the artists of Ukiyo-ye emphasized the theorem that art is the love of certain balanced relations and proportions, for they planned dresses in which every separate part is welded into one harmonious whole. They solved theories in colour, and delighted in selecting as trials for their skill the most unmanageable patterns, such as plaids and checks. They extolled “Notan” or the decorative use of values. [Illustration: Two Ladies. By Yeishi, who gave to his faces a mystic, even religious expression, like the women of the Middle Ages.]