Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 7.djvu/32

RV 12 bility of working over it even when dry: it seems to swallow up all shades which are not very much darker than itself. Practically, therefore, one wash is the limit. On the dry paper, too, the work has to be done quickly and with sweeping, finished strokes; if the brush leaves the paper, there is a hard line without recourse. Correction is practically impossible, and the result of every brushful of colour must, therefore, be foreseen to a nicety. On the other hand, the paper and silk—especially the latter—of the Japanese artist repay these technical difficulties by the delicate softness that they impart to a colour, and, in the case of silk, exceptional effects are produced by applying the pigments at the back of the drawing so that they show through the material.

There is another feature of Japanese pictorial art which, though apparently little appreciated by Western connoisseurs, must really be regarded as fundamental. It is that the position of the painter with regard to his picture influences the whole character of his line work. Instead of standing upright before his easel so that the axis of his lines is either on the mahl-stick or at his shoulder, he kneels on the floor with his paper or silk beneath him so that the axis of his sweep is the lower part of the leg, and the whole body from the knee upward becomes the arm with which the lines and curves are produced. Whether this mechanical difference constitutes an advantage or a disadvantage is a difficult question. But, as a very astute critic has remarked, "Japanese drawing so depends on its lines, its character is so wrapped up in them, that if the lines changed their sweep and flow, that character would be lost."

It will be easily inferred from what has thus far