HISTORICAL FICTION: ART HISTORY
The Printmaker’s Daughter by Katherine Govier
Katherine Govier is the author of “Creation,” a fascinating novelization of the life of bird artist John James Audubon. She displayed her literary prowess and a deep capacity for empathy with that portrait. Her latest novel, “The Printmaker’s Daughter,” features another artist: Hokusai’s third and most gifted daughter, Katsushika Oei.
Unlike with Audubon, you probably haven’t heard about her. Oei, or Oi, is largely unknown except to some connoisseurs of Japanese art. Her famous father, Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849), was a prolific artist who created the celebrated wood-block series “Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji” and the iconic and much parodied print “The Great Wave Off Kanagawa.” Fortuitously, some of his finest works found their way to Europe and inspired such artists as Manet, Monet, van Gogh and Degas. Oei was not so fortunate: Only about 10 paintings have survived; a few still await authentication.
Oei’s story, narrated in the first person, begins in the year 1800 in Edo (now Tokyo): “I was born in a hard time. We the townspeople led an unmarked existence. We had rights to nothing, only to witness the grand shogun’s parade: the march of the doomed man to the Punishment Grounds. … We fed on brown rice and whispers of love suicides. … We, the chonin, had one name — and no face.”
Oei, though smart and assertive, is by no means a beauty. Hokusai calls her “Ago-Ago” (“Chin-Chin”), referring to her jutting lower jaw. He doesn’t bother to give her a proper name, calling her “Oi” (Hey!) or “Ei” and eventually settling on Oei.
Hokusai journeys down the Tokaido Road, along striking seascapes and waterfalls, breathtaking views of the omnipresent snowcapped Mount Fuji, fishermen riding huge, cresting waves on their boats. She learns how to focus on painterly images and tell stories with them.
The novel takes us through significant moments in her life: her first lover, a marriage with an artist, a quick divorce followed by many years of living with Hokusai. Eventually, Oei begins to sell her art, brilliant scenes of Yoshiwara and the beautiful women of Edo. Like her father, she does not shy away from creating shunga (erotic prints), competing in a male-dominated field that yields lucrative commissions.
Govier sprinkles in a wide variety of historical characters along with their stories.
By the middle of this novel, readers may begin to suspect that Govier has another agenda in mind: to show that Hokusai’s studio was indeed a family project and that Oei played a major role in the creation of his woodcuts and paintings. In the book’s afterword, Go vier spells out her underlying thesis: “How is it that a woman known by her peers to be ‘an excellent painter,’ as good as or better than her very famous ‘old man’ … can disappear from the record?”
At the very least, readers should see the paintings of Katsushika Oi (or Oei) that are available online but unfortunately missing in “The Printmaker’s Daughter.” An earlier edition, published in Govier’s native Canada under a different title, “The Ghost Brush,” showed a portion of Oei’s exquisite painting on the cover.
