COLOR PRINTS


integrity-and swayed by the
most    opposing     influences
throughout his entire artistic
career.
   He had various manners, at
times almost a fatal facility of
dashing off his clever impres-
sions, his middle period being
much finer in artistic concep-
tion than either earlier or later.
He broke from all art tradition
and followed independent lines
of creation. Many interesting
anecdotes are related of him.
Upon one occasion, his enemies,
observing that he could pro-
duce nothing greater than the
little book illustrations then in
vogue, he confused them by
drawing in public a head thir-
ty-two feet high. On another
occasion, he drew    a  paper
horse as large as an elephant,
and immediately followed this
by  the representation  on  a
grain of rice of two spar-
rows in flight. The follow-
ing  passage is recorded    of
him: "From my sixth year
I had a perfect mania for
drawing   everything  I   saw.
When I reached my fiftieth
year   I   had   published  a
vast quantity   of  drawings;
but I am dissatisfied with all
that I produced before my


seventieth year. At seventy-     Haranobu
three I had some understanding of the
power and real nature of birds, fish and
plants. At eighty I hope to have made
farther progress, and at ninety to have


discovered  the ultimate foundation  of
things.
  "In my one hundredth year I shall rise to
yet higher spheres unknown and in my one
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