Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 7.djvu/45

RV 25 defective, but not more so than that of Europe down to the end of the thirteenth century. Technically they did not go beyond the use of water colours, but in range and quality of pigments, in mechanical command of pencil, they had no reasons to fear comparison with their contemporaries. They had caught only a glimpse of the laws of chiaroscuro and perspective, but the want of science was counterpoised by more essential elements of artistic excellence. In motives they lacked neither variety nor elevation. As landscape painters they anticipated their European brethren by over a score of generations, and created transcripts of scenery that for breadth, atmosphere, and picturesque beauty can scarcely be surpassed. In their studies of the human figure, although their work was often rich in vigour and expression, they certainly fell immeasurably below the Greeks; but to counter-balance this defect no other artists, except those of Japan, have ever infused into the delineations of bird life one tithe of the vitality and action to be seen in the Chinese portraitures of the crow, the sparrow, the crane, and a hundred other varieties of the feathered race. In flowers the Chinese were less successful, owing to the absence of true chiaroscuro, but they were able to evolve a better picture out of a single spray of blossom than many a Western painter from all the treasures of a conservatory. If we endeavour to compare the pictorial art of China with that of Europe, we must carry ourselves back to the days when the former was in its greatness. Of the art that preceded the Tang dynasty we can say nothing. Like that of Polygnotus, Zeuxis, and Apelles, it is now represented only by traditions, which, if less precise in the former than in the latter case, are not less laudatory; but it may be asserted that nothing produced by the painters of Europe between the seventh and thirteenth centuries of the Christian era approaches within any measurable distance of the works of the great Chinese masters who gave lustre to the Tang, Sung, and Yuan dynasties, nor—to draw a little nearer to modern times—is there anything in the religious art of Cimabue that would not appear tame and graceless by the side of the Buddhist compositions of Wu Tao-tsz, Li Lung-yen, and Ngan Hwui. Down to the