Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 7.djvu/352

 the conclusion is that the average sculptor, especially in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, seldom looked beyond the pages of some album of designs drawn by pictorial celebrities.

It is the more necessary to insist upon the high moral character of the Japanese artist or art-artisan because Americans and Europeans seldom have an opportunity of judging him by direct intercourse. There is always a middle-man whose cupidity reacts upon the artist's reputation. Nor can it be denied that his relations with the modern middle-man as well as the greatly changed nature of the clients whose tastes he has to consult have more or less impaired the art-artisan's morals. In former times, the sculptor of sword-furniture, for example, had direct contact with the great nobles, statesmen, and soldiers of his time. He received art-titles venerated since the earliest epochs; he was munificently rewarded by official recognition if he made any signal success; his fame was not merely his own but belonged also to the fief claiming his allegiance; a liberal pension placed him beyond the chill of poverty and enabled him to devote the labour of love to his work. All these conditions underwent a radical alteration after the fall of feudalism. The numerous principalities which had supported their own artists and vied with one another to attract and retain the best skill in each era, ceased to exist. The patrician class, munificent and appreciative patrons of art in all ages, stepped down from their commanding positions to make way for the merchant and the manufacturer. The representatives of the feudal nobility ceased to maintain throughout the empire splendid dwellings—palaces they might be called—for whose interior adornment