Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 7.djvu/25

RV 5 it is also true that he always had a full understanding of aerial perspective; and if it were possible to imagine for a moment that the presence of cast shadows escaped the observation of one so deeply versed in every other detail of nature's portraiture, the delusion would at once be dispelled by examining his representations of fishes, where each scale is accompanied by its due shadow, and of foliage where leaves and branches occupy their proper places in an accurate scheme of light and shade. But the fact is that he never allowed his artistic fancy to obscure the logic of his purpose. His prime function was to ornament a flat surface, and he recognised that scenes demanding the realistic effects produced by relief and differences of plane are entirely discordant with such a function. He considered that his picture, whether it represented landscape, seascape, figures, flowers, birds, or what not, was intended to produce, not an illusion, but a harmony. Very seldom did he make the mistake of pasting what people of the Occident call "pictures" upon walls, screens, doors, or ceilings. Aerial perspective and foreshortening were permissible, and he used them with admirable skill: linear perspective and cast shadows he carefully eschewed.

It is easy to conceive that a tendency to what the West calls "suggestion" would be developed by such conditions. A temple would be represented by the torii that spans its avenue of approach; a town, by two or three roof-ridges emerging from mist; a tree, by one bough; a river, by a sinuous stroke; the sea, by the curves of a few wave-crests. Some have said of Japanese art that it is essentially impressionist. That is true, with the limitation that the impressions produced are those of facts, not of fancies;