Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 7.djvu/30

RV 10 such a nation. Thus, if they are found wielding the artist's brush with admirable strength and accuracy, one may look also to find them revelling in microscopic elaboration of detail; if at one time they suggest a whole repertoire of facts by a few bold touches, at another they may be expected to lavish a whole mine of minutiae upon the working out of a few facts. And so indeed it is. Side by side with sketches which astonish by the suggestive wealth of half-a-dozen salient brush-strokes, pictures are seen which almost eclipse the illuminated missals of mediæval times, so conscientious is their detail, so profuse their elaboration. What perplexes many students, too, is that the same brush dashes out at one moment a design of colossal boldness, and devotes itself, the next, to work of marvellous detail. By way of illustration, reference may be made to Nobuzane and Hokusai, names very familiar to Western connoisseurs. If the average Japanese dilettante be asked to describe Nobuzane's characteristics, he will reply, delicacy of touch, illimitable minutiae of detail, and exquisite harmony of tints. Yet it is a fact established beyond query that the genuine works of Nobuzane show him to have been a master possessing noble vigour, and place him incomparably above the illuminator of a missal or the painter of a peacock's tail. So, too, if the average American or European collector had to define Hokusai's style, he would speak of bold outlines, of wonderfully realistic figures, and of a wealth of humorous conception. Yet there exist pictures by Hokusai which rank with the finest etching in the matter of minutiae, and with the most delicate engraving in the matter of mechanical accuracy of line. It is scarcely possible to conceive that the laborious