Page:A Grammar of Japanese Ornament and Design (1880).djvu/42

24 which the sun shines with a softened splendour, gives to all natural objects enhanced beauty, so that one ceases to wonder that the Japanese artists have been induced to endeavour to reproduce in their works some of the brilliancy which surrounds them. Thus it is that they have ventured to paint as in a golden atmosphere of sunlight, landscape and natural objects on a ground of gold; to try to represent the golden mists which hang round the hills in the autumn evenings, by powdering of gold and flakes of metal, which only the true decorative instinct could dare, and which nothing but surpassing skill could successfully accomplish without vulgarity.

The specially national and unmixed character of Japanese art is due to the isolated position which, until within the last few years, she has maintained since the earliest ages. With the exception of China and Corea, she has had no intercourse with any nation which could in any way affect her art productions. We have seen that China was her art master, and that on her teachings she has founded her own school. It is not, as in Europe, the grafting of one style upon another, and the accumulated knowledge and practice of all the various schools of art from the remotest antiquity; it has been a growth unaffected by any extraneous influences, self-contained and strictly national, and hence the astonishment and delight created when the art of Japan was revealed to the outside world by the opening of the country. It is when we consider the decorative art of Japan that we find how for many years they have distanced their Chinese masters, and produced a style peculiarly their own. Studying its application to ceramics, lacquer, bronzes, costume, etc., we see the ground upon which they triumph, and we recognize the superiority of their art.

The commencement of the nineteenth century gave to Japan a new school, the educated artisan-artist created by the genius of Hokusai, and the right to boast of a truly national art, which, although adapted from the old models, and still tainted with many antiquated errors, abounds in novelty and character and shows unlimited capabilities of development. The men who formerly led the educated world in matters of literary and artistic taste were all conservative in the ancient canons and aristocratic practice of art, and closed their ears when the plebeian draughtsmen were spoken of, for, with the critic, painting was essentially an occupation appertaining to gentle birth and classical culture; its practice, once almost confined to royalty and nobility, never descended below the samurai, and, though not strictly hereditary, was so far transmitted by family descent and adoption that more than one-half of the names known to fame belong to a few ancient lines. But the Hokusai School became an established fact, in spite of the contemptuous neglect of those who should have been its patrons; and its outcome, the artisan-artist, has given to the world at large not only the wealth of strange ideas and manual skill, so long imprisoned by the pride of seclusion, but has added to it no small portion of the sum of originality to which it can lay claim. Labouring diligently over a netsuke, colouring a vase, or sketching a design for a woodcut, we find him, gifted with talents of a very high order, telling us in his own manner the history and legends of his country, showing quaint touches of his own mother-wit, or putting into form an original observation of some simple, oft-repeated motive of bird or flower. He is commonly nothing but a copyist, but he is a skilful one, and repeats with the eye of understanding the experiences of form, and colour, that have accumulated during the preceding ages, and have been placed in his hands as models. These models, with their absence of light and shade and of strict accuracy of detail, are far less difficult to imitate than would be the more advanced works of the European schools.